"amid the embracings of a monopolized bottle"

(429.1-431.20)  Campbell and Robinson call this second chapter of Book III of Finnegan's Wake "amusing and easy-to-read."  Tindall gets a little more poetic in calling the chapter's pages "among the most diverting of the most diverting book."  Reading the Wake has been completely rewarding, but I'm not going to complain about diving into a chapter that's diverting and "easy."

Shaun's new name is now "Jaun," crossing his given name, as both Tindall and McHugh note, with that of the famous Don Juan.  The action begins with Jaun having halted in his journey "maybe nine score or so barrelhours distance off" to catch his breath and loosen his shoes.  Sizing Jaun up, the narrator says in an aside, "[G]racious helpings, at this rate of growing our cotted child of yestereve will soon fill space and burst in systems, so speeds the instant!"  This strikes me as both the narrator noting with astonishment young Jaun's physical and mythical growth over the course of this dream-narrative and Joyce commenting on how long his book's getting.  Jaun has been "amply altered for the brighter, though still the graven image of his squarer self as he was used to be."  His foot has fallen asleep, so he props himself against a sleeping constable, Sigurdsen, who is "buried upright" after having become "equilebriated amid the embracings of a monopolized bottle" (if that's not the best description of someone whose alcohol intake has caused him to pass out standing up, let me know).

Not far off from where Jaun has taken his rest are 29 girls from St. Brigid's "national nightschool," who are sitting outside "learning their antemeridian lesson of life" (maybe the post-midnight lessons of love?).  These girls, "all barely in their tytap teens," are drawn to "the rarerust sight of the first human yellowstone landmark (the bear, the boer, the king of all boors, sir Humphrey his knave we met on the moors!)."  This landmark seems to be a statue of HCE ("sir Humphrey"), indicating that the sleeping constable has merged with the man he hunted down.  The girls "paddled away, keeping time magnetically with their eight and fifty pedalettes," moving toward the statue even though they are repelled by its snores, which sound like it moaning, "Dotter dead bedstead mean diggy smuggy flasky!" (McHugh translates this from its equivalent Danish as "this is the best, my fat beautiful bottle").

Jaun doffs his hat at the girls, who swarm around him, "making a tremendous girlsfuss over him pellmale."  All but one -- "Finfria's fairest" -- dote upon him and grope him.  He asks about their lives, queries whether they've "read Irish legginds," and offers a few suggestions about how some of them could make their dress more modest, for "he was by the way of becoming . . . the most purely human being that ever was called man" and loved all of creation, from the lion to the microscopic organisms.  With these preliminaries out of the way, Jaun sees "his fond sister Izzy" (the fairest, and twenty-ninth one) whom he loves and thinks "the world and his life of her sweet heart could buy."