"I'm sorry to say I saw!"

(579.26-581.25)  "Now their laws assist them and ease their fall!" proclaims Mark at the beginning of today's passage.  We've seen the good side of HCE and ALP, so it's only fitting that we see some bad now.  After they "met and mated and bedded and bucked and got and gave and reared and raised," the couple caused some damage to Ireland, at least according to Mark, who says that they also "planted and plundered and pawned our souls and pillaged the pounds of the extramurals and fought and feigned with strained relations and bequeathed us their ills," and so on.  This passage (and all of today's reading) is on the straightforward end of the Wake spectrum, and one can tell that Joyce had a delightful time in putting together its top-notch, lively, sing-song language.

The couple will wreak havoc, but "bullseaboob and rivishy divil" will rise again and again, until "the book of dates he close."  Even then, Isabel -- "gentle Isad Ysut" -- will call "to Finnegan, to sin again and to make grim grandma grunt and grin again while the first grey streaks steal silvering by for to mock their quarrels in dollymount tumbling."  For now, they rest in their room "near the base of the chill stair" in HCE's "hydrocomic establishment."  ALP, "his ambling limfy peepingpartner" is "the slave of the ring" who, Mark argues, will ultimately set in motion the chain of events that will result in everyone buying into "the ballad that Hosty made."

But the public was ready to buy into that ballad anyhow, Mark says.  At every "mock indignation meeting" (there seems to be a lot of those happening nowadays), one could hear "vehmen's vengeance vective vollying" as HCE was called an invader and outlander.  As they "hauled home with their hogsheads" from HCE's pub, the meeting attendees would roar, "[F]ree boose for the man from the nark, sure, he never was worth a cornerwall fark, and his banishee's bedpan she's a quareold bite of a tark."

Mark sounds a bit guilty for the hatred that has grown for HCE, "the yet unregendered thunderslog," whom ALP has had to drop into a hiding hole.  "Ah, dearo!" Mark says.  "Dearo, dear!"  All of this was caused by the four old men ("the carryfour"), the three soldiers ("the trivials"), the two young women ("their bivouac") and HCE ("his monomyth").  Mark ends today's passage with sincere regret:  "Ah ho!  Say no more about it!  I'm sorry!  I saw.  I'm sorry!  I'm sorry to say I saw!"