"But there's leps of flam in Funnycoon's Wick."

(498.6-500.5)  Wow, I've hit page 500.  There's still a decent amount of work for me to do to finish the Wake, but I've come a long way since May 2014.  This Fall will be a busy one for me, but I'm hoping to roll with the momentum that's kept me going the past couple of months and reach the end of this project sometime in November.  It's sure to be lots of fun.

But back to the book.  Today's reading picks up Shaun's list of attendees at HCE's wake.  These "murdering Irish" drink the"fresh stout and good balls of malt" of "beers o'reyely," and ALP prepares the food, which in one sense is HCE's body.  HCE is "most highly astounded, as it turned up, after his life overlasting, at thus being reduced to nothing."  The old men salute HCE, saying, "God save you king!  Muster of the Hidden Life!"  But the drunken HCE awakes, as Shaun says:  "I had four in the morning and a couple of the lunch and three later on, but your saouls to the dhaoul, do ye.  Finnk.  Fime.  Fudd?"

As with the story ALP recently told, the old men don't believe what Shaun has just said.  "Impassable tissue of improbable liyers!" says one, who then asks Shaun whether he's going to continue to sit on the hill repeating himself.  Shaun answers, "I mean to sit here on this altknoll where you are now, Surly guy, replete in myself, as long as I live, in my homespins, like a sleepingtop, with all that's buried ofsins insince insensed insidesofme."

The old men now begin to grow alarmed as they hear a sound that seems to be coming from inside of the hill.  "He may be an earthpresence," says one, believing that the buried HCE might be making the noise.  "Was that a groan or did I hear the Dingle bagpipes Wasting war and?  Watch!"  The mystery is concerning.  "Whoishe whoishe whoishe whoishe linking in?" asks one in a state of excitement.  "Whoishe whoishe whoishe?"  Another identifies the noisemaker as the "dead giant manalive" and says, "They're playing thimbles and bodkins."  We'll get more hints as to who the mysterious figure is tomorrow.