"Hocus Crocus, Esquilocus"

(253.19-255.11)  Maybe the tears aren't coming this time.  Glugg has failed to answer the riddle for the third time -- "as tiercely as the duece before" -- but now "there is a hole in the ballet trough which the rest fell out."  In other words, there's something missing in the dance this time, and the rest of the routine (Glugg's tears, the Flora's heckles, Chuff's triumph) won't recur.

Why?  Perhaps it should have been obvious.  We're faced with the "sudden and gigantesquesque appearance unwithstandable as a general election in Barnado's bearskin amongst the brawlmiddle of this village childergarten of the largely longsuffering laird of Lucanhof."  This can only mean one thing (or maybe not, since it's the Wake, but bear with me):  In the middle of the children's pantomime the long-suffering giant of the Wake -- HCE -- is about to suddenly appear.

But how do we account for him?  He may have been hurled from the water onto the Irish coast, for he is the reappearing, mystical being through which the "human chain extends" just as the Christian tradition was passed down from St. John to St. Polycarp to St. Irenaeus to St. Patrick.  He is certainly legendary, as he has at least 1001 names (the "thousandfirst" of which is "Hocus Crocus, Esquilocus, Finnfinn the Faineant" and is only known to heroes).  The charges against him remain the same.  It's HCE, older than Adam, that we're once again "recurrently meeting."

HCE being HCE, he's still viewed as an invader, and the children are quick to shout, "Defend the King!" (the king, presumably, is Chuff/Shaun, the one who took his departed father's place).  Realizing that "at last is Longabed going to be gone to, that more than man," the children prepare for battle:  "Attach him!  Hold!"  They question why HCE must be awakened, but it seems as if their attack won't be very effective, as their continuing conjectures are suddenly cut off:  "if other who joined faith when his depth charge bombed our barrel spillway were to -- !"  This abrupt halt at the end of today's reading indicates that something major is about to happen, perhaps even as early as tomorrow.