"Time to won, barmon."

(50.6-52.17)  Whew.  I feel like getting through today's passage was a true accomplishment.  This isn't easy stuff to read.  After my first go through, I was thoroughly bewildered.  The Skeleton Key provided a little help in getting my bearings, but McHugh's Annotations saved the day.  I've found the process of going through the Wake, line by line, at the same time as I check the references in the Annotations forces me to give the text of the Wake a slow, careful reading while also turning on a number of lights in my bedimmed head.  At this point, I can't recommend the Annotations enough.  I'm almost to the point where I'd say it's the essential tool for making sense of and enjoying Finnegans Wake.

On to the text.  We pick up with the "Where are they now?" look at the various figures from the Wake's second chapter.  As I noted yesterday, the characters are getting new names (and shifting genders), and the first one we're introduced to here is the spouse of Treacle Tom/Sordid Sam:  "her wife Langley."  McHugh identifies Langley as Treacle Tom's associate, Frisky Shorty.  In the Skeleton Key, Campbell and Robinson don't even bother trying to link Langley with another character.  In his Reader's Guide, Tindall doesn't bother either, and what's more, he thinks that all the people we've been reading about on the past two pages are actually potential aliases for Hosty.  (I'm strongly inclined at this point to differ with Tindall -- sorry, Tindall!)  Given what I said above, I'm apt to agree with McHugh's interpretation, but I wanted to find some evidence of my own.  I think I've got it.  The text reads: 

Disliken as he was to druriodrama, her wife Langley, the prophet, and the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through spoke, disappeared . . . .

The key for me is in the phrase, "short of a frusker."  I think "frusker" indicates "Frisky" and "short" indicates "Shorty."  In the dreamworld of the Wake, I think that satisfies our burden of proof in making the case that Langley is Frisky Shorty.

With that said (isn't this fun?), it seems "clear" that Frisky/Langley has disappeared "from the sourface of this earth."  But it's never that easy.  Lately I've been doing a lot of very basic summary on this blog, but since I've already fallen this far down the Langley rabbit hole, it can't hurt to fall a little further.  Consider this the latest in my series of examples of the Wake's depth and complexity.

The narrator says that because Frisky/Langley disappeared "so entirely spoorlessly" (ok, that's easy -- he left without leaving even a spore as a trace, and he's a poor case like those I wrote about yesterday) and because "the Levey who might have been Langley may have really been a redivivus of paganinism or a volunter Vousden," (more name/role confusion, I'll leave this alone for now) the speculative "all but opine" that he "had transtutled his funster's latitat to its finsterest interrimost."  That last quoted phrase, like much of the Wake, can be taken in any number of interpretive directions.  For now, with the help of McHugh's illumination, I'll follow the path that feels easiest to me.  McHugh notes that "transtulit" is Latin for "transferred."  Frisky/Langley is a "funster," or a sort of carefree vagabond (he's called a "hobo" on this page, too).  Let's go with the sound-alike "habitat" for "latitat."  McHugh writes that Cape Finisterre is on the northwestern tip of Spain (it was also the site of a British naval battle -- those British battle sites have been making a lot of appearances).  "Interrimost" can mean "most interior."  So there we have it:  the speculative have a hunch that the funster Frisky/Langley transferred his habitat to the middle of Cape Finisterre.

Yeah.  The rest of the paragraph gets more complex, for it involves our old multifaceted friend, "Father San Browne," who is the priest that hears HCE's story from the Cad's wife.  I've already noted the depth inherent in Father Browne and will leave that for later, as well.  Suffice it to say that nothing's really clear about him, but it sounds like he got caught doing something bad (he was "semiprivately convicted of malpractices"), possibly (probably) with the Cad (who I think McHugh is correct in identifying here because he's referred to as "that same snob of the dunhill, fully several yearschaums riper" -- the Cad smokes a pipe, and according to McHugh, "Meerschaum" is a German word for pipe).

In the next paragraph, the narrator says it's a fact that "the shape of the average human cloudyphiz, whereas sallow has long daze faded, frequently altered its ego with the possing of the showers."  In other words, we're in a world where people's faces and identities will change with the passing of the showers.  This word of caution comes just before a mysterious figure appears on the scene.  Three boarding school truants ask him to tell the story of the "haardly creditable edventyres of the Haberdasher, the two Curchies and the three Enkelchums in their Bearskin ghoats!"  This familiar sounding lineup, with its double "H-C-E" initials, must be the story of HCE, the two girls and three men in the park, i.e., the story of HCE's fall.  The mysterious man, who I suspect is either HCE or a successor to HCE, apparently is enjoying his usual custom of smoking a pipe ("culubosh" -- McHugh says a "calabash" is a gourd that can be made into a pipe) and practicing his shooting with empty stout bottles.  After he "reprime[s]" his gun and resets his watch, he tells his three visitors of the "One" and "Compassionate."

I guess today's post is longer and more rambling than usual because I've enjoyed making some sense out of this passage.  Rewarding nights like tonight are keeping me fired up to keep reading.  Until tomorrow . . .