"I dreamt of a somday. Of a wonday I shall wake."

(480.6-482.8)  While going through today's reading for the first time, I found the dialogue tough to follow, given the fact that Joyce doesn't identify who is speaking.  I could usually get a sense of when Shaun was speaking, but the others were harder to identify.  McHugh's annotations are particularly helpful in identifying the speakers, and from here on out you can assume that I've identified the speaker by consulting his book.  As I've gone on, I've found (with McHugh's help, naturally) that there are certain characteristics to look for in identifying the speaker, such as the fact that Matthew has an Ulster accent ("Whu's he?  Whu's this lad, why the pups?" in today's reading, or "First if you don't mind" on page 477).  We'll see how it goes as the chapter progresses.

Today's passage features the four old men continuing to inquire about Shaun's father, HCE.  "I will crusade on with the parent ship, weather prophetting," says Mark, indicating that he's still focusing on the ship of yesterday's reading, as well as HCE's parental relationship with Shaun.  First, Shaun denies that he actually is HCE's biological son, and instead says that the perfidious welsher was just a foster father who gave Shaun his "breastpaps to suck" (alluding, as McHugh notes, to a primitive adoption ritual to which St. Patrick refused to submit).  Matthew asks, once again, who Shaun is, and receives the reply, "Hunkalus Childared Easterheld."

Mark believes he has some insight regarding the situation.  He recognizes in Shaun "[a] child's dread for a dragon vicefather," and he theorizes that in being raised by HCE, Shaun is like those people of various legends who were raised by wolves.  This line of inquiry makes Shaun nervous.  He begins to stutter like his father as he repeats his suspicion that the four old men are out to get him:  "I am dob dob dobbling like old Booth's, courteous.  The cubs are after me, it zeebs, the whole totem pack, vuk vuk and vuk vuk to them, for Robinson's shield."  One of the old men asks Shaun to repeat himself, but talk slower, thus prompting Shaun to tell the story of HCE in a somewhat cryptic style:

Hail him heathen, heal him holystone!
Courser, Recourser, Changechild................?
Eld as endall, earth......................?

After another question prompts Shaun to hint that that the Wake, like life, may just be a dream ("Dream.  Ona nonday I sleep.  I dreamt of a somday.  Of a wonday I shall wake.  Ah!"), Mark chimes in again with a theory of his own regarding the Wake and HCE's story.  It's a tale that "recurs in three times the same differently" and comes down "from the asphalt to the concrete, from the human historic brute," from Finnegan to HCE.  "We speak of Gun, the farther,"  Mark says, expecting Shaun to elaborate on his parentage.  "And in the locative.  Bap!  Bap!"

Shaun replies by noting the mystery surrounding his father, offering an assortment of locations where he may have been born.  He also offers the possibility that HCE could be "every at man like myself, suffix it to say, Abrahamsk and Brookbear!"  Shaun explains his inheritance from his father, saying, "By him it was done, bapka, by me it was gone into, to whom it will beblive, Mushame, Mushame!"  In fact, Shaun says, HCE could be father to us all, "all your and my das."

Asked near the conclusion of today's reading to identify his father, Shaun recalls the name of Persse O'Reilly, "Me das has or oreils.  Piercey, Piercey, piercey, piercey!"  This triggers a shock of recognition from one of the old men:  "White eyeluscious and muddyhorsebroth Pig Pursyriley!"  Where do we find him, one man asks?  "Hastille, Lucas and Dublinn!"  John guesses, before concluding the passage by perhaps suggesting that HCE is soon to be reborn, or perhaps just taking the opportunity to be vulgar.  "Vulva!  Vulva!  Vulva!  Vulva!"