"they were four dear old heladies"

(385.18-387.32)  After having turned their thoughts toward "the dear prehistoric scenes" of their young lives, the four old men return their attentions to the present time and resume their peeping observation of Tristan, "that mouth of mandibles, vowed to pure beauty," and Iseult, "his Arrah-na-poghue."  Iseult coughs and orders Tristan to sing "a dozen of the best favourite lyrical national blooms in Luvillicit, though not too much."  The four old men view the scene as "a seatuition so shocking and scandalous" and accordingly "thank God, there were no more of them."  

In a nice piece of Wakeian ambiguity, we read:  "and there they were, like a foremasters in the rolls, listening, to Rolando's deepen darblun Ossian roll."  Is the "they" here the four old men, or is it Tristan and Iseult?  The "foremasters" could mean the four old men, but it could also mean the two lovers on a four-post bed on a four-masted ship.  Of course, it could be both the old men and the couple.  Regardless, the four old men again find themselves "wishening for anything at all of the bygone times, the wald times and the fald times and the hempty times and the dempty times," including "four farback tumblerfuls of woman sqaush," as they watch the scene on the ship, "listening and spraining their ears for the millennium and all their mouths making water."

The rest of the day's passage comes from the perspective of one of the four old men, Johnny.  He agrees that what's been recounted so far of their young days is accurate, and he dives back into the reminiscence.  His thoughts turn to a Dublin auctioneer prominent in their youth, James H. Tickell.  This lofty figure "made the centuries" and has seen and encountered a world of things.  He dressed in a manner fit "to find out all the improper colleges," where he would presumably peddle his wares.

Abruptly, Johnny shifts his monologue back toward "long long ago in the old times Momonian" and remembers all the great events that have happened during his lifetime, going all the way back to "the drowning of Pharoah and all his pedestrians and they were all completely drowned into the sea, the red sea" before returning to the more contemporary "poor Merkin Cornyngwham, the official out of the castle on pension, when he was completely drowned off Erin Isles."  This could be a reference to King Mark, but it also recalls Martin Cunningham, a character from Ulysses who McHugh notes was based on a man named Matthew Kane, an Irish official who drowned in 1904 (and who additionally served as a model for the man drowned at sea referenced in Ulysses).

We'll get to the conclusion of Johnny's thoughts tomorrow.