(329.14-331.13) Ok, I'm back after a week-long absence. This time I got caught up in March Madness -- particularly the brief run by my alma mater, the University of Dayton, which featured two games in my hometown of Columbus that I felt morally obligated to attend. Hopefully this is my last extended absence, as I'd really like to meet my revised goal of completing this project by the end of August.
Back to the text. Today's passage resumes with the grand wedding feast of the Norwegian Captain and his new bride, Tina. And it certainly was grand. As the narrator says, "Dub did glow that night." Attending the proceedings are figures who parallel HCE's age-old nemeses -- the two young women and three soldiers -- although their representatives here are (for the moment) well-wishers: "Cannmatha and Cathlin sang together. And the three shouters of glory." The new couple is in for at least a brief period of bliss, both during the feast and throughout their honeymoon period: "A doublemonth's licence, lease on mirth, while hooneymoon and her flame went huneysuckling. Holyryssia, what boom of bells!" Everyone who's anyone is in attendance, including the dead, one of whom is detailed in a great passage: "Even Tombs left doss and dunnage down in Demidoff's tomb and drew on the dournailed clogs that Morty Manning left him and legged in by Ghoststown Gate, like Pompei up to date, with a sprig of Whiteboys heather on his late Luke Elcock's heirloom." (This sentence demonstrates the jovial, sing-songy nature of the bulk of today's reading.) Both sides of warring factions are even present, and these enemies are "swearing threaties" to each other.
The wedding reception's not all innocent fun and games, as one could probably expect. The attendees have "haven's lamps to hide us," yet "every lane had its lively spark," a temptress who is perfectly willing to entertain those wanting to indulge their more sinful urges. This seedy side of the evening doesn't escape the surveying eye of Father Matt Hughes, who "looked taytotally threbled."
The marriage doesn't necessarily bring a total and complete peace to Ireland, as was perhaps hoped by the Head Tailor. The "street spins legends while wharves woves tales," and the names of some old, respectable families are consequently marred. Nevertheless, things begin great for the married couple, who take on an aspect of Joyce and his wife, Nora, when they're "eloping for that holm in Finn's Hotel Fiord, Nova Norening." (Nora Joyce worked in Finn's Hotel in Dublin when she met her eventual husband, and the two soon eloped and fled for the Continent.) The couple soon "made fray" (made free, or left the country, like the Joyces) and became quite "homey."
The predicted arrival of twin sons and a daughter is announced via two knock-knock jokes, higlighting the warring nature of the sons and the Adam's Apple-less body of the daughter. The massed children (all 111 of them) join in a dance, which progresses from a barn dance to the can-can and the Highland Fling (not the "polkar," or polka, as the narrator notes) as they reach adolescence. As they grow older, the children take on the traits of the parents, until finally the daughter addresses a potential suitor, Tim Tommy Melooney, in a manner that indicates she's trying to either seduce him or threaten him: "I'll tittle [tattle/tickle] your barents [parents/bare end] if you stick that pigpin upinto meh!"
No comments:
Post a Comment