"Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be."

(214.10-216.5)  While finishing their duties, one washerwoman shouts that she sees a figure in the distance:  "the great Finnleader himself."  This would signal a return of HCE, but her counterpart doesn't believe it.  She says, "Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper!"  Unsatisfied to stop there, she accuses the woman who had the vision of being drunk.  After some more talk about how hard they've been working, the vision appears to the woman again:  "Holy Scamander, I sar it again!"  But the other woman's still not having it.  "Subdue your noise, you hamble creature!" she shoots back.  "What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyergray ass them four old codgers owns."

With night imminent, the women see a light in the distance, which could be a lighthouse or a boat.  The washing's done, so the women begin to take their leave of each other.  Before they go, though, they share final remembrances of ALP and HCE:  "Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes!  And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and dotthergills."  The women recognize that the family cycle will go on and on:  "Teems of times and happy returns.  The seim anew.  Ordovico or viricordo."  (This references Vico's theory of history as an endless cycle.)

Now the river has widened and begun flowing to the point where the distance and noise keep the women from understanding each other.  "Are you not gone ahome?" one asks.  "What Thom Malone?" the other replies, repeating what she thought she heard.  "I feel as old as younder elm," says one, referencing the idea from yesterday that the two women are turning into the stone and tree from the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes.  "A tale told of Shaun or Shem?" replies the other, mishearing what her opposite has said and hinting at what's to come in the Wake.  The chapter ends fittingly with one of the women encouraging the story to go on, while the day of the chapter -- and the first book of the Wake -- arrives at its completion:

Night now!  Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!  Night night!  Telmetale of stem or stone.  Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.  Night!

And that's the conclusion of the eighth chapter, as well as the first book.  We've come a long way -- 216 of the Wake's 628 pages -- but we have a longer way to go.  Time, and the story, go on.  Bring on the tale of Shem and Shaun.

"every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it"

(212.20-214.10)  We're winding down to a close here in chapter eight of Finnegans Wake.  Just today's reading and tomorrow's, and then we're done with this extended look at ALP.  With the catalog of gifts given by ALP completed ("My colonial, wardha bagful!" one woman says), the washerwomen move back to their work.  "Throw us your hudson soap for the honour of Clane!" one says.  "The wee taste the water left.  I'll raft it back, first thing in the marne."  They continue bickering, and one notes that while the other gets all the swirls on her side of the river, her unfortunate friend just gets the snuff papers tossed into the water by Jonathan Swift (and, by proxy, HCE, for Swift -- who also had an ambiguous relationship with two young women -- is a version of HCE).  At least this woman gets to read the "[f]oul strips of his chinook's bible," which features amusing titles "drawn on the tattlepage" (among these titles are parodies of the works of Oscar Wilde, John S. Mill, and George Eliot).  One woman has spotted a piece of china below the river, but laments the fact that it seems to have disappeared.

The hour is now getting late.  In the dusk, the women are slowly turning into the tree and the stone that remained on the scene at the conclusion of the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes.  "My branches lofty are taking root," one woman says.  The woman are tired ("O, my back, my back, my bach!" one complains), and so they set to finishing their washing with the refrain, "Wring out the clothes!  Wring in the dew!"

They haven't finished discussing ALP, though.  One asks, "Wharnow are alle her childer, say?"  The other responds, "Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger."  We hear of the fates of a few.  One branch has married into a family in Spain, for example, while others are wearing "yangsee's hats" (meaning some have become Americans (yankees) and some have become Chinese (from the Yang-tze River)).  But as the night comes, the women have a harder time hearing each other.  "Do you tell me that now?" one asks.  Soon after, one says she's hard of hearing because of "that irrawaddyng I've stoke in my aars."

They've still got a little bit to discuss, however, as I mentioned, above.  We'll get to the chapter's finale tomorrow.

"life past befoul his prime"

(210.22-212.19)  Today's reading completes the catalog of gifts handed out by ALP to her multitude of children.  There's references here to saints ("snakes in clover, picked and scotched, and a vaticanned viper catcher's visa for Patsy Presbys" is a reference to Saint Patrick), rival authors ("for Will-of-the-Wisp and Barny-the-Bark two mangolds noble to sweeden their bitters" is a reference to Nobel Prize-winning Irish authors Yeats and Shaw), and Joyce himself ("a tibertine's pile with a Congoswood cross on the back for Sunny Twimjim" -- Clongowes Wood is the school that Joyce and his literary alter ego, Stephen, attended).

We also get references to characters we've met in the Wake.  One of the major characters gets lumped in with the rest of the rabble with "a sunless map of the month, including the sword and stamps, for Shemus O'Shaun the Post."  The Earwickers' maid is featured with "a stiff steaded rake and good varians muck for Kate the Cleaner."  And ALP accounts for a whole crop of people (some of whom featured prominently in the spreading of rumors about HCE and the resulting composition of "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly"):  

whatever you like to swilly to swash, Yuinness or Yennessy, Laagen or Niger, for Festus King and Roaring Peter and Frisky Shorty and Treacle Tom and O. B. Behan and Sully the Thug and Master Magrath and Peter Cloran and O'Delawarr Rossa and Nerone MacPacem and whoever you chance to meet knocking around.

Of personal note, I was pleased to see "a pig's bladder balloon for Selina Susquehanna Stakelum," since the I was born just near where the Susquehanna River (nice how the river name contains the word "Anna," huh?) runs through Central Pennsylvania.  Also, the last gift-receiving group accounted for is Isabel's 28 sisters, which includes one young woman named Lezba Licking (there's a Joycean lesbian joke in there) whose name accounts for the closest river reference (that I've seen to this point in the chapter) to where I live now:  the Licking River (at least, I'm counting it as a reference to the Ohio Licking).

The passage ends with the final gift, which is given to Isabel:  "So on Izzy, her shamemaid, love shone befond her tears as from Shem, her penmight, life past befoul his prime."  Thus, ALP's daughter gets the gift of love, while her son, Shem, bears the burden of falling in his father's footsteps.

"I promise I'll make it worth your while."

(208.27-210.22)  Upon leaving her house and heading out, ALP must've made a good impression, for one of the washerwomen says that she was crowned "chariton queen."  As she went on to "meander by that marritime way in her grasswinter's weeds," a chorus of "drouthdropping surfacemen" were in awe of her and said that she either got a facelift or had been doped.

The other washerwoman then asks, "But what was the game in her mixed baggyrhatty?"  ALP carried her bag -- which is the one ALP obtained from her son, Shaun the postman -- on her journey like Santa Claus.  She embraced her daughter, Isabella (here "Isolabella"), and ran with her reconciled sons, Shem and Shaun (here fashioned after the original Romans, Romulus and Remus, as "Romas and Reims").  From the bag, ALP gave gifts to these three, as well as all of her other children.  

The rest of the passage begins a long catalog of all of the gifts given by ALP.  This part is fairly easy to read (for the Wake), and entertaining to boot.  Some of the more interesting and fun gifts (and recipients) I found in today's reading include "for sulky Pender's acid nephew deltoïd drops, curiously strong;" "a brazen nose and pigiron mittens for Johnny Walker beg;" "a papar flag of the saints and stripes for Kevineen O'Dea" (combining paper flag, papal flag, and the stars and stripes); and "a seasick trip on a government ship for Teague O'Flanagan."  It looks like there's a full boatload of more gifts coming in tomorrow's reading . . .

"Hustle along, why can't you?"

(206.29-208.26)  Today's reading consists mostly of detailed descriptions of ALP.  It's pretty straightforward (as far as I can tell), and I really don't have much to add to Joyce's text at this point.

The passage begins with ALP bathing, grooming, and clothing herself.  As with the rest of the chapter to this point, the language often carries two connotations:  one for ALP the woman, the other for ALP the river.  After she's ready to go out, she has her "boudeloire maids" go to "His Affluence, Ciliegia Grande and Kirschie Real," to make an appointment to visit.  She grabs the mailbag she got from Shaun, and goes forth from her "bassein" (or, river basin).

The description is interrupted here by the other washerwoman, who asks her counterpart to pick up the pace.  Resuming, we hear ALP described as "a bushman woman, the dearest little moma ever you saw."  To support this description, we get a full report on what she wore as she stepped out of the house.  Again, there's not much to add to Joyce's description.  I like the word he uses here for "ear":  "laudsnarers."  McHugh points out that "Laut" is German for "sound," so here Joyce is using "sound snarers," which is great because . . . that's what ears do.  I also enjoy the description of ALP's riding coat:  "her blackstripe tan joseph was sequansewn and teddybearlined, with wavy swansruff" particularly for the word "teddybearlined."  Along with her outfit and accessories, ALP carries a coin in each pocket, which "weighed her safe from the blowaway windrush."  The washerwoman wraps up the description of ALP's ensemble by noting one of its key features with more river language:  "the rreke of the fluve of the tail of the gawan of her snuffdrab siouler's skirt trailed ffiffty odd Irish miles behind her lungarhodes."

Oh, and by the way, I was also glad to see another reference to Manneken Pis here, when ALP asks His Affluence's wife if she can spare her husband for a second:  "a request might she passe of him for a minnikin."

"Never stop! Continuarration! You're not there yet."

(204.21-206.28)  As the eighth chapter of the Wake progresses, the two washerwomen's interactions start getting a bit more amusing and testy.  Toward the beginning of today's passage, one woman asks, among other things, why ALP was "frickled" (freckled) and whether she had wavy hair or "was it weirdly a wig she wore."  All these questions start wearing at the other woman's patience, and the two have a tenser exchange:  "O go in, go on, go an!  I mean about what you know.  I know right well what you mean.  Rother!"  This leads into a digression in which the women discuss their work, including whose garments are whose and what state the clothes are in.  For instance, one says, "That's not the vesdre benediction smell.  I can tell from here by their eau de Colo and the scent of her oder they're Mrs Magrath's.  And you ought to have aird them."

After the women shake themselves from this digression, one of them resumes the story of ALP, picking up just after HCE's fall.  Once the news got out, the woman says, even the snow that fell on HCE's hair was against him.  Everywhere -- "in cit or suburb or in addled areas" -- HCE's image was turned upside down and even the idle cornerboys mocked him.  He was in bad shape, but ALP stood by him.  As one woman says, ALP "said to herself she'd frame a plan to fake a shine, the mischiefmaker, the like of it you niever heard."

What was ALP's plan?  She obtained "a shamy mailsack" from her son, Shaun, and then "consulted her chapboucqs."  Before this washerwoman details the rest of the plan, however, the other woman begins to laugh at the story, which prompts her to ask whether her companion really wants to hear the story at all.  They then begin to bicker in an amusing passage:

O but you must, you must really!  Make my hear it gurgle gurgle, like the farest gargle gargle in the dusky dirgle dargle!  By the holy well of Mulhuddart I swear I'd pledge my chanza getting to heaven through Tirry and Killy's mount of impiety to hear it all, aviary word!  O, leave me to my faculties, woman, a while!  If you don't like my story get out of the punt.  Well, have it your way, so.  Here, sit down and do as you're bid.

The passage ends with one of the women scrubbing "the canon's underpants."  We'll accordingly have to wait until tomorrow to get more of the story of ALP's plan to avenge her husband.

"Push up and push vardar and come to uphill headquarters!"

(202.4-204.20)  Today's passage was another challenging, yet fascinating one.  And once again, after going through the process of moving from overwhelming confusion to the point where a dim light of understanding went on, I realized that sometimes the more challenging the Wake gets, the more rewarding it ends up being.  Done with discussing ALP's children, the washerwomen move on to the subject of ALP's own promiscuity.  One says, "She must have been a gadabount in her day, so she must, more than most."  She went all the way from the river's source to the ocean, one woman says, "[c]asting her perils before our swains."  But, one asks, who was ALP's first lover?  The short, but completely vague, answer is, "Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat."

It turns out that ALP herself doesn't really know the man's identity:  "She sid herself she hardly knows whuon the annals her graveller was, a dynast of Leinster, a wolf of the sea, or what he did or how blyth she played or how, when, why, where and who offon he jumpnad her and how it was gave her away."  One woman says that the man was "a heavy trudging lurching lieabroad of a Curraghman, making his hay for whose sun to shine on, as tough as the oaktrees."  

But the other disagrees:  "You're wrong there, corribly wrong!"  She continues, "It was ages behind that when nullahs were nowhere."  This begins a brilliant passage in which the women (as pointed out by Campbell and Robinson) roughly trace the course of the Liffey backward toward its source.  At the same time, they're also tracing ALP's personal progression back from a sexually active adult to a blossoming young woman to an innocent child.  They move immediately back in time from the lieabroad of a Curraghman to "county Wickenlow, garden of Erin, before she ever dreamt she'd lave Kilbridge and go foaming under Horsepass bridge."  Back in "the dinkel dale of Luggelaw" (where McHugh says Saint Kevin spent some time), she had a romantic encounter with "a local heremite, Michael Arklow."  Entranced by ALP, Arklow "plunged both of his newly anointed hands, the core of his cushlas, in her singimari saffron strumans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it."  This is Akrlow both dipping his hand in the stream and running them through ALP's hair.  Aroused, Akrlow "had to forget the monk in the man so, rubbing her up and smoothing her down, he baised his lippes in smiling mood, kiss akiss after kisokushk (as he warned her niver to, niver to, nevar) on Anna-na-Poghue's of the freckled forehead."  This encounter profoundly moved ALP, who thereafter rose two feet higher in her own estimation "[a]nd steppes on stilts ever since."

But before Arklow, "[t]wo lads in scoutsch breeches went through her."  These two lads -- Barefoot Burn (I wonder if this is the Scot, Robert Burns?) and Wallowme Wade -- had their encounters (which aren't described in any detail) before ALP, the person, hit puberty ("before she had a hint of a hair at her fanny to hide or a bossom to tempt a birch canoedler") and before ALP, the river, had reached a point where she could support large ships ("a bulgic porterhouse barge").  And before that, she was playfully licked by a hound when she was "too faint to buoy the fairest rider, too frail to flirt with a cygnet's plume."  Finally, when she was just a slight trickle at the river's source, "she laughed innocefree with her limbs aloft and a whole drove of maiden hawthorns blushing and looking askance upon her."  All in all, these two pages serve as reminders of Joyce's brilliance.

"We won't have room in the kirkeyaard."

(200.4-202.3)  Yesterday we left off with the washerwomen discussing how ALP donned a luxurious gown, and today we pick up with them recounting how she was "brahming" (or singing) love songs (that sometimes tilt toward the bawdy end of the spectrum) to HCE.  HCE, however, was unmoved by ALP's songs, because he was "as deaf as a yawn."  ALP walked out of the house, but instead of exacting some kind of revenge on HCE for ignoring her attempts to arouse him, she instead stood in the doorway, smoking a pipe and making signs to every woman that walked by to come into the house.  One by one, she would show the women how to perform a striptease and offer them a silver coin.  According to the washerwomen, then, ALP was "[t]hrowing all the neiss little whores in the world at him" to "hug and hab haven in Humpy's apron!"

The women then change the subject from ALP's procuring of prostitutes for HCE to the contents of ALP's letter.  In this telling, the letter consists of a poem or song written by ALP, the first verse of which is, "By earth and the cloudy but I badly want a brandnew bankside, bedamp and I do, and a plumper at that!"  The song goes on to explain that ALP is waiting for HCE "to wake himself out of his winter's doze and bore me down like he used to."  In the meantime, she looks for work from a lord or knight so that she can feed her family, and she ends the song by expressing her desire to leave her bed and breathe the salty air on the beach.  If you read the "bankside" of the opening verse literally, this is a song of the river waiting for the winter to end so that the snow will thaw and the flowing water of spring will cut deeper riverbanks and enable the river to run to the ocean.  If you read "bankside" as "backside," however, it's a song of sexual frustration, with ALP wishing to be more attractive so that either HCE will become interested in her again or she will be able to leave the marital bed and seek new pleasures down by the ocean.

The third subject of today's reading is ALP's children.  One washerwoman asks how many children ALP had.  No one seems to know for sure, but the most prominent theory indicates that she has 111.  Some say that she had these children "wan bywan bywan" (one by one by one, or 1-1-1), and that she can't remember half of their names.  "They did well to rechristien her Pluhurabelle," one woman says.  It seems that another theory is that ALP had a number of litters of children, ranging from twins and triplets to octuplets and nonuplets.  In regard to this unbelievable number of children, one washerwoman references perhaps my favorite philosopher in saying, "We won't have room in the kirkeyaard."

"Tell us in franca langua. And call a spate a spate."

(198.3-200.4)  As chapter eight of the Wake progresses onward, it quickly becomes clear that the depth of ALP's character is going to be explored almost as much (if not equally as much) as HCE's.  The two washerwomen concede that despite his faults, HCE did work to make a living:  "He erned his lille Bunbath hard, our staly bred, the trader.  He did.  Look at here.  In this wet of his prow."  And just as HCE isn't all bad, ALP isn't all good.  "Shyr she's nearly as badher as him herself," one woman says.  In fact, one woman alleges that ALP ordered women to entertain HCE, or, as it's said in the text, to "tickle the pontiff aisy-oisy."  The woman goes so far as to call ALP a "proxenete," which McHugh identifies as someone who negotiates a marriage, or, in French slang, a bawd.  Another story is that ALP could be seen sitting before her window pretending to play a dirge on a fiddle, even though she didn't know how to play the fiddle.

The conversation turns back toward HCE, who is said to have become "as glommen as grampus" at some point and driven to be a hermit by the troubles of the world.  He sat somber on his seat, engaging in a hunger strike, dreaming incessantly (is the Wake the result of his endless dreaming?), and belching for "severn years."  During this period, ALP was greatly concerned about HCE.  She "darent catch a winkle of sleep," and cooked meals (variously featuring eggs, Danish bacon, green tea, black coffee, and ham sandwiches) for him.  The ungrateful HCE would cast the meal aside, stare at ALP, and call her a so-and-so.  Undeterred, ALP would whistle for him.

Today's reading concludes with the aristocratic ALP, casting sparks from her fan and sporting fireflies in her frosty tresses, clothed in a luxurious jade gown.  This is an abrupt stopping point, but we're in the middle of a four-page paragraph, so I'll hold off on going further until tomorrow.

"As you spring so shall you neap."

(196.1-198.2)  Chapter eight of Finnegans Wake does indeed pick up where chapter seven left off:  ALP.  Its opening lines, formatted in the shape of a triangle (ALP's symbol) tell us all we need to know about the chapter's content:

O 

tell me all about 

Anna Livia!  I want to hear all

The chapter starts out as two women having a conversation as they wash HCE's clothes from opposing banks of the river.  (They must be at a narrow part of the river, for their heads bump when they stoop across the river to cross.  One woman says, "And don't butt me -- hike! -- when you bend.")  Naturally, their conversation meanders back and forth between ALP and her husband.  Also prominently featured in their dialogue are a torrent of river names, both famous and obscure, that keep the river theme prominent in the reader's mind.

The chapter begins with the recounting of and adding to the rumors surrounding HCE.  They begin by referring to the nefarious conduct that the three soldiers reported HCE engaged in with respect to the two young women in Phoenix Park:  "whatever it was they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish park."  With this in mind, it's clear that HCE's reputation is as foul as his clothes.  "He's an awful old reppe," one says.  "Look at the shirt of him!  Look at the dirt of it!  He has all my water black on me."

Talk soon turns to the marriage between HCE and ALP.  Much like Joyce's own marriage, rumors abound about the legitimacy of their vows:  "Was her banns never loosened in Adam and Eve's or were him and her but captain spliced?"  In other words, did they receive a proper Catholic wedding (in Adam and Eve's, the church referenced on the book's first page), or were married in a civil service?  Regardless, it appears that HCE (represented by the hill of Howth) and ALP (represented by the flowing river Liffey) consider their marriage valid (as did Joyce in regard to his own marriage):  "Flowey and Mount on the brink of time makes wishes and fears for a happy isthmass.  She can show all her lines, with love, license to play.  And if they don't remarry that hook and eye may!"

The talk also touches on HCE's status as immigrant/invader.  It's unclear whether he gained material wealth from ALP after he "raped her home" or whether he's broke, with "[n]ot a grasshoop to ring her, not an antsgrain of ore."  Thus, even though one woman says, "I know by heart the places he likes to saale, duddurty devil!" and "I know he well," it seems at this early point in the chapter that neither woman has the full and accurate story of HCE and ALP.  Nevertheless, as that same woman says, "But toms will till."