"Vary vary finny!"

(518.15-520.21)  The discussion of the fight between HCE and the "new" version of the Cad resumes at the beginning of today's reading.  The two exchanged blows (and, apparently, weapons) "like their caractacurs in an Irish Ruman" and threw bottles at each other, for they "did not know that the war was over."  But after that war was done, the two men "meed peace."  Shaun, however, agrees with the old man that the wars will continue despite the peace between these two giants.  As the old man suggests, "this pattern pootsch punnermine of concoon and proprey went on, hog and minne, a whole whake, your night after larry's night" and is repeated "a thousand and one times."

The old man turns back to his continuing cross examination of Shaun, whom he believes may be inconsistent with the truth.  "Didget think I was asleep at the wheel?" the old man asks.  He wonders how Shaun could attest under oath before the "tall grand jurors of thathens of tharctic" that the moon was shining at the same time that there was plenty of rain.  Shaun affirms this previous statement, but implies that he may not have been truthful before when he said that he had witnessed firsthand everything to which he has attested.  Instead, he says, at least part of the story was "told me as an inspired statement by a friend of myself."

The remainder of today's reading consists of an account of what that friend relayed to Shaun.  This new version of the story implicates the four old men, implying that they too were witnesses to HCE's sin in the park.  In this telling, Luke ("Tarpey") relayed to Shaun that rain was promised on the evening in question to Mark's wife ("Mrs Lyons").  Luke also told Shaun that Luke took a walk in Phoenix Park ("feelmick's park"), where a Mr Michael Clery said that Father MacGregor (a cross between Matthew and John) was desperate for help.  Clery told Luke to go see MacGregor to tell him about the incident in the confessional (in which the Cad's wife was reported to have told her priest the story of HCE and thus started the spread of the rumors about him).  In this version, it was Mark's wife who told the priest, and it's added that she left three shillings for the church.  More of the old man's examination of Shaun will come tomorrow . . . .