(504.3-506.10) The examination of Shaun resumes with the old man conducting the questioning asking Shaun to elaborate about the tree mentioned at the end of yesterday's reading. This tree, which stood in the sun and shade, certainly was the tree of life (Campbell and Robinson offer a discussion of how the tree corresponds to numerous mythical antecedents), for all of life sprung from it, including "tuodore queensmaids and Idahore shopgirls and they woody babies." The "killmaimthem pensioners" threw stones at the tree to try to knock off cranberries and "pommes annettes" for "unnatural refection," and "handpainted hoydens" found their husbands on the tree's branches. The serpent from the Garden of Eden -- Eve's "downslyder" -- also spent some time on the tree, prompting "sinsinsinning since the night of time." Shaun concludes this entertaining description of the tree by describing "each and all of their branches meeting and shaking twisty hands all over again in their new world through the germination of its gemination from Ond's outset till Odd's end." The tree, like human history as described by Vico, is constantly renewing.
Nothing but the "rocked of agues" could compare to the tree. Another iteration of the tree/stone theme that has featured throughout the Wake, the rock, which is only hinted at briefly here, is the "steyne of law" that stands opposite of the tree but also completes it, much like the relationship of Shaun and Shem. Returning to the tree and Satan's fall, Shaun and the old man team up to offer a playful retelling of that fall at the end of today's passage. The old man asks whether Satan ended up on his sore bottom end ("soredbohmend") because God ("Knockout") literally kicked him out of heaven. Shaun replies that God, "the Grand Precurser," "thundered at him to flatch down off that erection and be aslimed of himself for the bellance of hissch leif."
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