Monday 26 February 2018

Monday, 19 February 2018

Stopped at "... all eclosed asong with them." (450.21).

It was in fact asong, i.e, song/music system that Shaun wants the liddle giddles to sing/learn. He tells them, 'I give, a king, to me, she does, alone, up there, yes see, I double give,.... In other words he is teaching them 'do re me fa sol la, si, do'...., the tonic sol-fa system of music.

Still talking to his sister, Shaun confesses that he would ask no greater kindness from fate than to stay where he is, with his tinny of brownie's tea, under the invocation of Saint James Hanway, servant of Gamp...
Of course, he does not mean a tin of Brownies and tea! According to McHugh, brownies stand for junior girl guides. Saint Jamas Hanway is Jonas Hanway, who was the first man to carry an Umbrella in London. That Jamas Hanway is linked to Jonas Hanway is underscored by the qualification given to him as 'servant of Gamp.' Mrs Gamp is a well known character from the novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens. It is said in that novel that Mrs. Gamp always carried an umbrella.
Mrs Gamp
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sairey-Gamp
Shaun is also looking for girl (the nippy girl of my heart's appointment) but he can wait with patience (I am in no violent hurry). Meanwhile he will listen to birdcalls (lots of names of birds follow this announcement) and go fishing (a variety of fish is mentioned at this point!)

Thursday 15 February 2018

Monday, 12 February 2018

We stopped at "Do you know what, liddle giddles?" (448.25)

The question is do we - even if we are no liddle giddles - know what these pages tell us! Brother Shaun, who has been lecturing sister Issy, has progressed from announcing, 'I'll tear up your lampshades and lock all your trotters in the closet, I will, and cut your silk-skin into garters,' to proclaiming, 'Iy waount yiou!' as after all 'Aerwenger's (Earwicker) my breed...' Of course, on one level, this is quite a bit incestuous...

Soon Shaun's interest in Issy becomes more prosaic. He wants her to join him in rendering social service, to adopt fosterlings with him. Along with her, he wants to circumcivicise (circumcise? civilise?) all Dublin country. He is obviously bothered by how dirty Dublin is, wondering when it will get its wellbelavered white like l'pool and m'chester (washed white like Liverpool and Manchester.)

Shaun also asks them, the vocational scholars - is he addressing here Issy and the as many as twentynine hedge daughters out of Benent Saint Berched's national nightschool, whom we had met at the beginning of this chapter? -, to write essays, mentioning a varied number of suitable topics such as 'Explain why there is such a number of orders of religion in Asia! Why such an order number in preference to any other number? Why any number in any order at all!'

Naturally umpteen number of songs build the background to the utterings of Shaun here!  

Monday 12 February 2018

Monday, 5 February 2018

Apologies for not being able to update the blog for this day. I was not present at the reading!