"flapping and cycling, and dooing a doonloop"

(393.4-395.25)  Today we get to our fourth (and final) address from the four old men, this one coming from Matt.  After beginning by passing the Eucharistic loaf introduced by Lucas, Matt laments "Poor Andrew Martin Cunningham," one of the chapter's drowned men.  With that preface complete, Matt begins the proper part of his address by foregoing the sad times recalled by Lucas and instead going back to the happier times of their youths, when they were "in auld land syne (up) their four hosenbands, that were four (up) beautiful sister misters, now happily married."  (McHugh notes that the parenthetical "up"s found throughout this chapter could be the drunken four old men hiccuping.)

It's worth emphasizing how much Matt's whirlwind tour of the happier scenes of their youth serves to counterbalance the gloomy tone of Lucas's reminiscences.  There was plenty of seafood (in contrast to the scraps of food available for the wretched Matt in Lucas's address), and the four friends spent their time "always counting and contradicting every night 'tis early the lovely mother of periwinkle buttons" (of an alluring lady, quite possibly ALP).  The coo-coo clock would wake them at all hours of the night, and they'd peek out the window to see if the morning paper had come.  They never rested and instead played, delivered their gospels, and dreamed.  They repeated this cycle ("dooing a doonloop," spinning around like Dunlop tires) and followed "the wake of their good old Foehn again" (Finnegan, again) on their "clipperbuilt."

Soon after these idyllic memories are recounted, Matt slowly transitions (almost as if he's coming to his senses) to the scene that's before them, which Lucas totally ignored during his address:  Tristan and Iseult on the boat.  This begins with vague near-references, such as "till he was instant and he was trustin [Tristan], sister soul in brother hand, the subjects being their passion grand," when discussing the foursome's early love for nursery rhymes.  Eventually, Matt fully returns to the present when he describes the four old men, "like a foreretyred schoonmasters, and their pair of green eyes and peering in, so they say, like the narcolepts on the lakes of Coma, through the steamy windows, into the honeymoon cabins."  They're peeping into the cabins, just like HCE was accused of doing, and gazing at "all the hunnishmooners and the firstclass ladies."  Now fully in the present moment, Matt concludes his address by lustily describing Tristan and Iseult as they embrace "all improper" in their cabin.  He ends by saying, "And all, hee hee hee, quaking, so fright, and shee shee, shaking.  Aching. Ay, ay."