"Breath and bother and whatacurss."

(223.19-225.14)  Standing face to face with Glugg, Chuff, the "evangelion," said, "Arrest thee, scaldbrother!"  Chuff proffered a shamrock ("his trifle," which McHugh notes corresponds with the "trefoil" used by St. Patrick to demonstrate the Holy Trinity) as an apparent peace offering.  Instead of peace, Glugg got a riddle:  "Who are you?  The cat's mother.  . . . What do you lack?  The look of a queen."  "[B]uzzling is brains," Glugg sought the solution to the problem posed by the riddle:  "But what is that which is one going to prehend?"

Glugg sought the answer from the four elements and four authors of the gospels, but received no assistance from them:  "With nought a wired from the wordless either."  He went off to question the four old men who have figured so prominently in the Wake.  They didn't help, either, so he sent four curses upon them:  he fouled the water, threw stones, poisoned their dinner of duck and gravy, and made off with the rest of the meat.

The narrator isn't without some sympathy for Glugg's predicament:  "Ah ho!  This poor Glugg!  It was so said of him about of his old fontmouther.  Truly deplurabel!  A dire, O dire!"  He "inhebited" his father's "freightfullness," and so it's fitting that -- in a call back to the riddle of the Prankquean -- his "fontmouther . . . sprankled his allover with her noces of interregnation:  How do you do that lack a lock and pass the poker, please?"  Put simply, Glugg's subconsciousness was in a "limbopool."

He goes back to the Floras.  Seeing them, Glugg decided that he wanted to know what colors of the rainbow they stood for and wore on their drawers.  He decided to ask their "commoner guardian at the next lineup" so that he could "reloose that thong off his art."  The Floras laughed at Glugg, and hinted at the fact that Glugg had pissed his pants.  

Dejected, Glugg plopped down to the ground "with the belly belly prest," much like the serpent in Genesis.  He then summarized his, and humankind's general plight with poignancy:  "Breath and bother and whatacurss.  Then breath more bother and more whatacurss.  Then no breath no bother but worrawarrawurms.  And Shim shallave shome."  In other words, life is breath, bother, and insurmountable trouble (what a curse); then breath, more bother, and more insurmountable trouble; and, finally, worrying, wormy death.  And Shem recognizes that he will have some of all of this.

I've struggled with this chapter at times, particularly because there's a lot of density to the language so far.  I'm beginning to get a feel for it, though, so I think it'll go smoother and smoother as we move forward (and as I try to remember to focus primarily on the stuff closer to the surface level during this "preliminary" run through the book).  More from Glugg tomorrow . . . .