Finnegans Wake Notes

079.01 took the ham of, the plain being involved in darkness, low cirque

079.02 waggery, nay, even the first old wugger of himself in the flesh,

079.03 whiggissimus incarnadined, when falsesighted by the ifsuchhewas

079.04 bully on the hill for there had circulated freely fairly among his

079.05 opposition the feeling that in so hibernating Massa Ewacka, who,

079.06 previous to that demidetached life, had been known of barmi-

079.07 cidal days, cook said, between soups and savours, to get outside

079.08 his own length of rainbow trout and taerts atta tarn as no man

079.09 of woman born, nay could, like the great crested brebe, devour

079.10 his threescoreten of roach per lifeday, ay, and as many minnow a

079.11 minute (the big mix, may Gibbet choke him!) was, like the salmon

079.12 of his ladderleap all this time of totality secretly and by suckage

079.13 feeding on his own misplaced fat.

[079.14-079.26]: of women — and excrement.

079.14 Ladies did not disdain those pagan ironed times of the first

079.15 city (called after the ugliest Danadune) when a frond was a friend

079.16 inneed to carry, as earwigs do their dead, their soil to the earth-

079.17 ball where indeeth we shall calm decline, our legacy unknown.

079.18 Venuses were gigglibly temptatrix, vulcans guffawably eruptious

079.19 and the whole wives' world frockful of fickles. Fact, any human

079.20 inyon you liked any erenoon or efter would take her bare godkin

079.21 out, or an even pair of hem, (lugod! lugodoo!) and prettily pray

079.22 with him (or with em even) everyhe to her taste, long for luck,

079.23 tapette and tape petter and take pettest of all. (Tip!) Wells she'd

079.24 woo and wills she's win but how the deer knowed where she'd

079.25 marry! Arbour, bucketroom, caravan, ditch? Coach, carriage,

079.26 wheelbarrow, dungcart?

[079.27-080.19]: Kate Strong's statement — the site of the Phoenix Park encounter.

079.27 Kate Strong, a widow (Tiptip!) she pulls a lane picture for

079.28 us, in a dreariodreama setting, glowing and very vidual, of old

079.29 dumplan as she nosed it, a homelike cottage of elvanstone with

079.30 droppings of biddies, stinkend pusshies, moggies' duggies, rotten

079.31 witchawubbles, festering rubbages and beggars' bullets, if not

079.32 worse, sending salmofarious germs in gleefully through the

079.33 smithereen panes Widow Strong, then, as her weaker had

079.34 turned him to the wall (Tiptiptip!), did most all the scavenging

079.35 from good King Hamlaugh's gulden dayne though her lean

079.36 besom cleaned but sparingly and her bare statement reads that,

Summary page 79:

Emancipated from his long fast in the grave, the old specter may have taken advantage of the darkness over the plain to trick the fellow with an illusion of his former corpulence. For it was generally felt among the opposition, that Master Earwicker (who had been known in his days of false plenty—his barmecidal days—to get around his own length of rainbow trout and tarts) must now, like a salmon, be feeding secretly and by suckage on the fat of his own hump. [This concludes the prehistory of HCE. Like Finnegan of the vaudeville song he suffered a fall, was laid out for dead, and remained in a heavy coma while a noisy quarrel raged among the survivors. He may be expected to revive.

[The remainder of the present chapter deals with the aftermath of the great story. It falls into three distinct sections. The first (79-81) publishes the recollections of an old woman, Kate, who professes to be the widow of the great man.* The second (81-96) presents the evidence of a posthumous trial, in which there appeared, as witness and accused respectively, two young men betraying the traits not of HCE himself but of his sons, Shem and Shaun. Here, for the first time, appear the patterns which are later to become characteristic of these two. Since the boys enter the stage with a court scene, in which the old history of their father is rehearsed, it is clear that they have inherited not only fractions of the character but even some¬ thing of the life history and guilt of the fallen patriarch. The final section of this chapter (96-103) deals with the problem of the disappearance of the body from the grave, its possible reappearance anywhere, and the condition of the plucky little widow, ALP.]

Those were the pagan, iron times of the first city, when temptresses giggled everywhere and men erupted with guffaws. Love was free and fickle, morning and afternoon. A lady would woo even a pair of demigods at a time, and anywhere you please. Kate Strong, the old scavenger-widow who knew the city during those filthy times, paints for us a dreary, glowing, vivid picture. She lived in a homelike cottage of elvan-stone, with rubbish stinking everywhere.

* Kate, Kathe, Kathleen na Hoolihan, Old Mother Ireland (Sean Bhean Bocht), widow of the ancient Finn MacCool, serves as housekeeper to the establishment of HCE. She had grand old recollections of the grand old days, when it was Finn MacCool, not H. C. Earwicker, who was master man of Ireland. She is the same who appeared as janitrix of the museum (8-10), and as plunder-pussy-gnarlybird gathering relics of the great days into her nabsack (10-11). [[However, the gnarlybird may be ALP herself.—ELE]]