"What a meanderthalltale to unfurl . . . "

(18.17-20.18)  I'll readily admit that I struggled through my first read through today's passage.  I caught a description of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, as well as a reference to how loaded Finnegans Wake is, but other than that I was fortunate when I caught snippets of meaning.  Days like today make me appreciate the more than 75 years of Wake scholarship that preceded my own attempt to read Joyce's book, and I feel empathy for his contemporaries, who struggled to make even the slightest sense of what became the Wake as it was published serially (more accurately in unordered bits and pieces from various sections of the book as Joyce completed them) as Work in Progress.

After going through my secondary sources, I still found this section perhaps the toughest yet.  It begins with an abrupt shift from the Mutt and Jute dialogue with the command "(Stoop)."  We're apparently being guided around a sort of archeological site and being asked if we can "rede" its world.  This could be another version of the littered post-war battlefield, but it is definitely the Wake itself:  "It is the same told of all.  Many."  This "allaphbed" contains the continuing and endlessly repeated story of all life -- "They lived und laughed ant loved end left." -- arising out of the fall:  "Forsin."  We see primitive tools that indicate the presence of HCE -- "A hatch, a celt, an earshare" -- as well as figurines representing the diametrically opposed warring sons (set forth in two sentences, each consisting of the same words, but written in reverse order) and a provocative effigy of the daughter figure.  We're then given an interpretive hint when we're told that when a small part stands for the whole, the whole will soon stand for a small part.  Another interesting passage contains a listing of the odds-and-ends found at the site written in puns on the letters that begin the Hebrew and then the Greek alphabets:  "Olives, beets, kimmels, dollies, alfrids, beatties, cormacks and daltons."  (Props to McHugh for pointing that out in his Annotations.)  Following that is the bit where "snake wurrums" appear everwhere ("Our durlbin is sworming in sneaks.") before Saint Patrick ("Paddy Wippingham") catches them.

The next paragraph sets forth some of the numerology prevalent in the Wake.  I've got a vague grasp on that, but not enough of a grasp to explain it on my own right now.  This confusing paragraph ends with a damning of the Father figure in all of his countless incarnations:  "Damadam to infinities!"

I found the final paragraph of today's reading the most interesting.  It traces the development of written language from the time in which there is "as yet no lumpend papeer in the waste" until the Wake itself is completed.  Notably, the advancements created by the development of "Gutenmorg"'s printing press still fail to perfect written language, for "papyr" is still made of "hides and hints and misses in prints."  Joyce seems to address the reader directly in writing that "you need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the book."  Touché, Mr. Joyce.  Touché.