1Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar Blaubarb ant Horrild Hairwire and an inlaw to Capt. the Hon. and Rev. Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Blogg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of the space of today knows that his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually was like to look at.

2Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his-cold toes, a bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings andsense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for full-score eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four tes — ters one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man? : telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, an-other when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? —; when he is a — yours till the rending of the rocks, — Sham.

3Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen’s tea-time salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias’ cans, Findlater and Gladstone’s, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex’s molten mutton or greasilygristly grunters’ goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand! he could not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland’s split little pea. Once when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hic-cupping, apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron, like a scedar, of the founts, on moun-tains, with limon on, of Lebanon. O! the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike firewater or first-served firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhing-ingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yella — green funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch’s hospitality when they found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, jo, openwide sat, jo, jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of the most serene magyansty az archdio-chesse, if she is a duck, she’s a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, now is it? artstouchups, funny you’re grinning at, fancy you’re in her yet, Fanny Urinia.

4Aint that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dog’s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle for the very fourth snap the Tulloch–Turn-bull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet unre — muneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, num- mer desh to tren, into Patatapapaveri’s, fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho, chavi! Sat shin, shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.

5[Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexexl COMMUNICATED.]

6Around that time, moravar, one generally, for luvvomony hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early tum out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B., and do for himself one dandy time, nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the foreign devil’s leave the fraid bom fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guarda-costa leporello? Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here tokay, gone tomory, we’re spluched, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.

7You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour’s word, and if ever, during a Munda conversazione commoted in the nation’s interest, delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers, vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag, and be a men instead of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what is the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille? : or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible’s travels or during your rural troubadouring, happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one comer of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? with-out one sigh of haste like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber’s face, root with ear-waker’s pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione (since, still and before physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agri-colous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the panesthetic at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment visanvrerssas, cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a bab-bly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaves — water to those present (who meanwhile, with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the other people in the story, leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.

8He went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and, as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argu-ment among slangwhangers, the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree to every word as soon as half uttered, command me!, your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, grati-as, I’m yoush, see wha’m hearing? , also goods, please it, me sure? , be filling this!, quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me? , is their girlic-on-you? , to your good self, your sulphur, and then at once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener’s eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker, (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more.

9One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy downpour) as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal viol-ence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh’s house at 81 bis Mabbot’s Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther lae-tich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back, and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert’s perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people, looking on him with the contemp of the contempibles, after first gaving him a roll in the dirt, might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.

10All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already? In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his

11Wife; By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and

12Thunder for Life Not yet has the Emp from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre; Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made

13Warre; Not yet Witchywithcy of Wench struck Fire of his Heath from on

14Hoath; Not yet his Arcobaleine forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath; Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool Gardener’s bound to

15fall; Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will

16there’s his Wall; But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons

17leap his Bier And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff

18in her Ear. Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eire-whiggs raille! Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of

19Perce–Oreille.

20O fortunous casualitas! Lefty takes the cherubcake while Rights cloves his hoof Darkies never done tug that coon out to play non-excretory, anti-sexuous, misoxenetic, gaasy pure, flesh and blood games, written and composed and sung and danced by Niscemus Nemon, same as piccaninnies play all day, those old (none of your honeys and rubbers!) games for fun and ele-ment we used to play with Dina and old Joe kicking her behind and before and the yellow girl kicking him behind old Joe, games like Thom Thom the Thonderman, Put the Wind up the Peeler, Hat in the Ring, Prisson your Pritchards and Play Withers Team, Mikel on the Luckypig, Nickel in the Slot, Sheila Harnett and her Cow, Adam and Ell, Humble Bumble, Moggie’s on the Wall, Twos and Threes, American Jump, Fox Come out of your Den, Broken Bottles, Writing a Letter to Punch, Tiptop is a Sweetstore, Henressy Crump Expolled, Postman’s Knock, Are We Fairlys Represented? , Solomon Silent reading, Appletree Bearstone, I know a Washer-woman, Hospitals, As I was Walking, There is Oneyone’s House in Dreamcolohour, Battle of Waterloo, Colours, Eggs in the Bush, Habberdasherisher, Telling your Dreams, What’s the Time, Nap, Ducking Mammy, Last Man Standing, Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues, Fickleyes and Futilears, Handmarried but once in my Life and I’ll never commit such a Sin agin, Zip Cooney Candy, Turkey in the Straw, This is the Way we sow the Seed of a long and lusty Morning, Hops of Fun at Miliken’s Make, I seen the Tooth-brush with Pat Farrel, Here’s the Fat to graze the Priest’s Boots, When his Steam was like a Raimbrandt round Mac Garvey.

21Now it is notoriously known how on that surprisingly bludgeony Unity Sunday when the grand germogall allstar bout was harrily the rage between our weltingtoms extraordinary and our petty-thicks the marshalaisy and Irish eyes of welcome were smiling daggers down their backs, when the roth, vice and blause met the noyr blank and rogues and the grim white and cold bet the black fighting tans, categorically unimperatived by the maxims, a rank funk getting the better of him, the scut in a bad fit of pyjamas fled like a leveret for his bare lives, to Talviland, ahone ahaza, pur-sued by the scented curses of all the village belles and, without having struck one blow, (pig stole on him was lust he lagging it was becaused dust he shook) kuskykorked himself up tight in his inkbattle house, badly the worse for boosegas, there to stay in afar for the life, where, as there was not a moment to be lost, after he had boxed around with his fortepiano till he was whole bach bamp him and bump him blues, he collapsed carefully under a bedtick from Schwitzer’s, his face enveloped into a dead war-rior’s telemac, with a lullobaw’s somnbomnet and a whotwater — wottle at his feet to stoke his energy of waiting, moaning feebly, in monkmarian monotheme, but tarned long and then a nation louder, while engaged in swallowing from a large ampullar, that his pawdry’s purgatory was more than a nigger bloke could bear, hemiparalysed by the tong warfare and all the shemozzle, (Daily Maily, fullup Lace! Holy Maly, Mothelup Joss!) his cheeks and trousers changing colour every time a gat croaked.

22How is that for low, laities and gentlenuns? Why, dog of the Crostiguns, whole continents rang with this Kairokorran low-ness! Sheols of houris in chems upon divans, (revolted stellas vespertine vesamong them) at a bare (O!) mention of the scaly rybald exclaimed: Poisse!

23But would anyone, short of a madhouse, believe it? Neither of those clean little cherubum, Nero or Nobookisonester himself, ever nursed such a spoiled opinion of his monstrous marvellosity as did this mental and moral defective (here perhaps at the vanessance of his lownest) who was known to grognt rather than gunnard upon one occasion, while drinking heavily of spirits to that interlocutor a latere and private privysuckatary he used to pal around with, in the kavehazs, one Davy Browne–Nowlan, his heavenlaid twin, (this hambone dogpoet pseudoed himself under the hangname he gave himself of Bethgelert) in the porchway of a gipsy’s bar (Shem always blaspheming, so holy writ, Billy, he would try, old Belly, and pay this one manjack congregant of his four soups every lass of nexmouth, Bolly, so sure as thair’s a tail on a commet, as a taste for storik’s fortytooth, that is to stay, to listen out, ony twenny minnies moe, Bully, his Ballade Imaginaire which was to be dubbed Wine, Woman and Water-clocks, or How a Guy Finks and Fawkes When He Is Going Batty, by Maistre Sheames de la Plume, some most dreadful stuff in a murderous mirrorhand) that he was avoopf (parn me!) aware of no other shaggspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the seem as woops (parn!) as what he fancied or guessed the sames as he was him-self and that, greet scoot, duckings and thuggery, though he was foxed fux to fux like a bunnyboy rodger with all the teashoplionses of Lumdrum hivanhoesed up gagainst him, being a lapsis linquo with a ruvidubb shortartempa, bad cad dad fad sad mad nad vanhaty bear, the consciquenchers of casuality prepestered crusswords in postposition, scruff, scruffer, scrufferumurraimost andallthatsortofthing, if reams stood to reason and his lanka-livline lasted he would wipe alley english spooker, multapho — niaksically spuking, off the face of the erse.

24After the thorough fright he got that bloody, Swithun’s day, though every doorpost in muchtried Lucalizod was smeared with generous erstborn gore and every free for all cobbleway slippery with the bloods of heroes, crying to Welkins for others, and noahs and cul verts agush with tears of joy, our low waster never had the common baalamb’s pluck to stir out and about the com-pound while everyone else of the torchlit throng, slashers and sliced alike, mobbu on massa, waaded and baaded around, yamp-yam pampyam, chanting the Gillooly chorus, from the Monster Book of Paltryattic Puetrie, O pura e pia bella! in junk et sampam or in secular sinkalarum, heads up, on his bonafide avocation (the little folk creeping on all fours to their natural school treat but childishly gleeful when a stray whizzer sang out intermediately) and happy belongers to the fairer sex on their usual quest for higher things, but vying with Lady Smythe to avenge Mac–Jobber, went stonestepping with their bickerrstaffs on educated feet, plinkity plonk, across the sevenspan ponte dei colori set up over the slop after the war-to-end war by Messrs a charitable government for the only once (dia dose Finnados!) he did take a tompip peepestrella throug a threedraw eighteen hawkspower durdicky telescope, luminous to larbourd only like the lamps in Nassaustrass, out of his westernmost keyhole, spitting at the impenetrablum wetter, (and it was porcoghastly that outumn) with an eachway hope in his shivering soul, as he prayed to the cloud Incertitude, of finding out for himself, on akkount of all the kules in Kroukaparka or oving to all the kodseoggs in Kalatavala, whether true conciliation was forging ahead or falling back after the celestious intemperance and, for Duvvelsache, why, with his see me see and his my see a corves and his frokerfoskerfuskar layen loves in meeingseeing, he got the charm of his optical life when he found himself (hic sunt lennones!) at pointblank range blinking down the barrel of an irregular revolver of the bulldog with a purpose pattern, handled by an unknown quarreler who, supposedly, had been told off to shade and shoot shy Shem should the shit show his shiny shnout out awhile to look facts in their face before being hosed and creased (uprip and jack him!) by six or a dozen of the gayboys.

25What, para Saom Plaom, in the names of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the incensed privy and the licensed pantry gods and Stator and Victor and Kutt and Runn and the whole mesa redonda of Lorencao Otulass in convocacaon, was this dis-interestingly low human type, this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity, this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at, it will be precise to quarify, for he seems in a badbad case?

26The answer, to do all the diddies in one dedal, would sound: from pulling himself on his most flavoured canal the huge chest-house of his elders (the Popapreta, and some navico, navvies!) he had flickered up and flinnered down into a drug and drunkery addict, growing megalomane of a loose past. This explains the litany of septuncial lettertrumpets honorific, highpitched, erudite, neoclassical, which he so loved as patricianly to manuscribe after his name. It would have diverted, if ever seen, the shuddersome spectacle of this semidemented zany amid the inspissated grime of his glaucous den making believe to read his usylessly unread-able Blue Book of Eccles, ‚dition de t‚nŠbres, (even yet sighs the Most Different, Dr. Poindejenk, authorised bowdler and censor, it can’t be repeated!) turning over three sheets at a wind, telling himself delightedly, no espellor mor so, that every splurge on the vellum he blundered over was an aisling vision more gorgeous than the one before t.i.t.s., a roseschelle cottage by the sea for nothing for ever, a ladies tryon hosiery raffle at liberty, a sewer-ful of guineagold wine with brancomongepadenopie and sick — cylinder oysters worth a billion a bite, an entire operahouse (there was to be stamping room only in the prompter’s box and everthemore his queque kept swelling) of enthusiastic noble-women flinging every coronetcrimsoned stitch they had off at his probscenium, one after the others, inamagoaded into ajustil-loosing themselves, in their gaiety pantheomime, when, egad, sir, acordant to all acountstrick, he squealed the topsquall im Deal Lil Shemlockup Yellin (geewhiz, jew ear that far! soap ewer! loutgout of sabaous! juice like a boyd!) for fully five minutes, infinitely better than Baraton Mc Gluckin with a scrumptious cocked hat and three green, cheese and tangerine trinity plumes on the right handle side of his amarellous head, a coat macfarlane (the kerssest cut, you understand?) a sponiard’s digger at his ribs, (Alfaiate punxit) an azulblu blowsheet for his blousebosom blossom and a dean’s crozier that he won from Cardinal Lin-dundarri and Cardinal Carchingarri and Cardinal Loriotuli and Cardinal Occidentaccia (ah ho!) in the dearby darby doubled for falling first over the hurdles, madam, in the odder hand, a.a.t.s.o.t., but what with the murky light, the botchy print, the tattered cover, the jigjagged page, the fumbling fingers, the foxtrotting fleas, the lieabed lice, the scum on his tongue, the drop in his eye, the lump in his throat, the drink in his pottle, the itch in his palm, the wail of his wind, the grief from his breath, the fog of his mindfag, the buzz in his braintree, the tic of his conscience, the height up his rage, the gush down his fundament, the fire in his gorge, the tickle of his tail, the bane in his bullugs, the squince in his suil, the rot in his eater, the ycho in his earer, the totters of his toes, the tetters on his tumtytum, the rats in his garret, the bats in his belfry, the budgerigars and bumbosolom beaubirds, the hullabaloo and the dust in his ears since it took him a month to steal a march he was hardset to mumorise more than a word a week. Hake’s haulin! Hook’s fisk! Can you beat it? Whawe! I say, can you bait it? Was there ever heard of such lowdown blackguardism? Positively it woolies one to think over it.

27Yet the bumpersprinkler used to boast aloud alone to himself with a haccent on it when Mynfadher was a boer constructor and Hoy was a lexical student, parole, and corrected with the black- board (trying to copy the stage Englesemen he broughts their house down on, shouting: Bravure, surr Chorles! Letter purfect! Culossal, Loose Wallor! Spache!) how he had been toed out of all the schicker families of the klondykers from Pioupioureich, Swabspays, the land of Nod, Shruggers’ Country, Pension Danubierhome and Barbaropolis, who had settled and stratified in the capital city after its hebdomodary metropoliarchialisation as sunblistered, moonplastered, gory, wheedling, joviale, litche-rous and full, ordered off the gorgeous premises in most cases on account of his smell which all cookmaids eminently objected to as ressembling the bombinubble puzzo that welled out of the pozzo. Instead of chuthoring those model households plain wholesome pothooks (a thing he never possessed of his Nigerian own) what do you think Vulgariano did but study with stolen fruit how cutely to copy all their various styles of signature so as one day to utter an epical forged cheque on the public for his own private profit until, as just related, the Dustbin’s United Scullery-maid’s and Househelp’s Sorority, better known as Sluttery’s Mowlted Futt, turned him down and assisted nature by unitedly shoeing the source of annoyance out of the place altogether and taytotally on the heat of the moment, holding one another’s gonk (for no-one, hound or scrublady, not even the Turk, ungreekable in purscent of the armenable, dared whiff the polecat at close range) and making some pointopointing remarks as they done so at the perfects of the Sniffey, your honour, aboon the lyow why a stunk, mister.

28[Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned female cos-tumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, rather full pair of culottes and onthergarmenteries, to start city life together. His jymes is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately commited one of the then commandments but she will now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies. ABORTISEMENT.]

29One cannot even begin to post figure out a statuesquo ante as to how slow in reality the excommunicated Drumcondriac, nate Hamis, really was. Who can say how many pseudostylic shamiana, how few or how many of the most venerated public impostures, how very many piously forged palimpsests slipped in the first place by this morbid process from his pelagiarist pen?

30Be that as it may, but for that light phantastic of his gnose’s glow as it slid lucifericiously within an inch of its page (he would touch at its from time to other, the red eye of his fear in saddishness, to ensign the colours by the beerlitz in his mathness and his educandees to outhue to themselves in the cries of girl-glee: gember! inkware! chonchambre! cinsero! zinnzabar! tinc — ture and gin!) Nibs never would have quilled a seriph to sheepskin. By that rosy lampoon’s effluvious burning and with help of the simulchronic flush in his pann (a ghinee a ghirk he ghets there!) he scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled and skrevened nameless shamelessness about everybody ever he met, even sharing a precipitation under the idlish tarriers’ umbrella of a showerproof wall, while all over up and down the four margins of this rancid Shem stuff the evilsmeller (who was devoted to Uldfadar Sardanapalus) used to stipple endlessly inartistic portraits of himself in the act of reciting old Nichiabelli’s monolook interyerear Hanno, o Nonanno, acce’l brubblemm’as, ser Autore, q.e. d., a heartbreakingly handsome young paolo with love lyrics for the goyls in his eyols, a plain-tiff’s tanner vuice, a jucal inkome of one hundred and thirtytwo dranchmas per yard from Broken Hill stranded estate, Came-breech mannings, cutting a great dash in a brandnew two guinea dress suit and a burled hogsford hired for a Fursday evenin merry pawty, anna loavely long pair of inky Italian moostarshes glistering with boric vaseline and frangipani. Puh! How unwhisperably so!

31The house O’Shea or O’Shame, Quivapieno, known as the Haunted Inkbottle, no number Brimstone Walk, Asia in Ireland, as it was infested with the raps, with his penname SHUT sepia-scraped on the doorplate and a blind of black sailcloth over its wan phwinshogue, in which the soulcontracted son of the secret cell groped through life at the expense of the taxpayers, dejected into day and night with jesuit bark and bitter bite, calico- hydrants of zolfor and scoppialamina by full and forty Queasi-sanos, every day in everyone’s way more exceeding in violent abuse of self and others, was the worst, it is hoped, even in our western playboyish world for pure mousefarm filth. You brag of your brass castle or your tyled house in ballyfermont? Niggs, niggs and niggs again. For this was a stinksome inkenstink, quite puzzonal to the wrottel. Smatterafact, Angles aftanon browsing there thought not Edam reeked more rare. My wud! The warped flooring of the lair and soundconducting walls thereof, to say nothing of the uprights and imposts, were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback snaps, doubtful eggshells, bouchers, flints, borers, puffers, amygdaloid almonds, rindless raisins, alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, om-piter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries at speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smut, fallen lucifers, vestas which had served, showered ornaments, borrowed brogues, reversibles jackets, blackeye lenses, family jars, falsehair shirts, Godforsaken scapulars, neverworn breeches, cutthroat ties, counterfeit franks, best intentions, curried notes, upset latten tintacks, unused mill and stumpling stones, twisted quills, painful digests, magnifying wineglasses, solid objects cast at goblins, once current puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mot-tage, unquestionable issue papers, seedy ejaculations, limerick damns, crocodile tears, spilt ink, blasphematory spits, stale shest-nuts, schoolgirl’s, young ladies, milkmaids’, washerwomen’s, shopkeepers’ wives, merry widows’, ex nuns’, vice abbess’s, pro virgins’, super whores’, silent sisters’, Charleys’ aunts’, grand-mothers’, mothers’-inlaws, fostermothers’, godmothers’ garters, tress clippings from right, lift and cintrum, worms of snot, toothsome pickings, cans of Swiss condensed bilk, highbrow lotions, kisses from the antipodes, presents from pickpockets, borrowed plumes, relaxable handgrips, princess promises, lees of whine, deoxodised carbons, convertible collars, diviliouker doffers, broken wafers, unloosed shoe latchets, crooked strait waistcoats, fresh horrors from Hades, globules of mercury, undeleted glete, glass eyes for an eye, gloss teeth for a tooth, war moans, special sighs, longsufferings of longstanding, ahs ohs ouis sis jas jos gias neys thaws sos, yeses and yeses and yeses, to which, if one has the stomach to add the breakages, upheavals distortions, inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son of Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr haw-rors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an ineluctable phan — tom (may the Shaper have mercery on him!) writing the mystery of himsel in furniture.

32Of course our low hero was a self valeter by choice of need so up he got up whatever is meant by a stourbridge clay kitchen-ette and lithargogalenu fowlhouse for the sake of akes (the umpple does not fall very far from the dumpertree) which the moromelodious jigsmith, in defiance of the Uncontrollable Birth Preservativation (Game and Poultry) Act, playing lallaryrook cookerynook, by the dodginess of his lentern, brooled and cocked and potched in an athanor, whites and yolks and yilks and whotes to the frulling fredonnance of Mas blanca que la blanca hermana and Amarilla, muy bien, with cinnamon and locusts and wild bees-wax and liquorice and Carrageen moss and blaster of Barry’s and Asther’s mess and Huster’s micture and Yellownan’s embrocation and Pinkingtone’s patty and stardust and sinner’s tears, acuredent to Sharadan’s Art of Panning, chanting, for all regale to the like of the legs he left behind with Litty fun Letty fan Leven, his cantraps of fermented words, abracadabra calubra culorum, (his oewfs … la Madame Gabrielle de l’Eglise, his avgs … la Mistress B. de B. Meinfelde, his eiers Usquadmala … la pomme de ciel, his uoves, oves and uves … la Sulphate de Soude, his ochiuri sowtay sowmmonay a la Monseigneur, his soufflosion of oogs with somekat on toyast … la MŠre Puard, his Poggadovies alla Fenella, his Frideggs … la Tricarˆme) in what was meant for a closet (Ah ho! If only he had listened better to the four masters that infanted him Father Mathew and Le PŠre Noble and Pastor Lucas and Padre Aguilar — not forgetting Layteacher Baudwin! Ah ho!) His costive Satan’s antimonian manganese limolitmious nature never needed such an alcove so, when Robber and Mum-sell, the pulpic dictators, on the nudgment of their legal advisers, Messrs Codex and Podex, and under his own benefiction of their pastor Father Flammeus Falconer, boycotted him of all mutton-suet candles and romeruled stationery for any purpose, he winged away on a wildgoup’s chase across the kathartic ocean and made synthetic ink and sensitive paper for his own end out of his wit’s waste. You ask, in Sam Hill, how? Let manner and matter of this for these our sporting times be cloaked up in the language of blushfed porporates that an Anglican ordinal, not reading his own rude dunsky tunga, may ever behold the brand of scarlet on the brow of her of Babylon and feel not the pink one in his own damned cheek.

33Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram viviparam et cuncti-potentem sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali atque discinctis perizomatis, natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans, flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro exoneratus, classicum pulsans, stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum gemino-rum Medardi et Godardi laete ac melliflue minxit, psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibile (faked O’Ryan’s, the indelible ink).

34Then, pious Eneas, conformant to thc fulminant firman which enjoins on the tremylose terrian that, when the call comes, he shall produce nichthemerically from his unheavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania or bedeed and bedood and bedang and bedung to him, with this double dye, brought to blood heat, gallic acid on iron ore, through the bowels of his misery, flashly, faithly, nastily, appropriately, this Esuan Menschavik and the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only fools-cap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marry-voising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history (thereby, he said, reflecting from his own individual person life unlivable, trans-accidentated through the slow fires of consciousness into a divi — dual chaos, perilous, potent, common to allflesh, human only, mortal) but with each word that would not pass away the squid-self which he had squirtscreened from the crystalline world waned chagreenold and doriangrayer in its dudhud. This exists that isits after having been said we know. And dabal take dab-nal! And the dal dabal dab aldanabal! So perhaps, agglaggagglo — meratively asaspenking, after all and arklast fore arklyst on his last public misappearance, circling the square, for the deathfˆte of Saint Ignaceous Poisonivy, of the Fickle Crowd (hopon the sexth day of Hogsober, killim our king, layum low!) and brandishing his bellbearing stylo, the shining keyman of the wilds of change, if what is sauce for the zassy is souse for the zazimas, the blond cop who thought it was ink was out of his depth but bright in the main.

35Petty constable Sistersen of the Kruis–Kroon-Kraal it was, the parochial watch, big the dog the dig the bog the bagger the dugger the begadag degabug, who had been detailed from pollute stoties to save him, this the quemquem, that the quum, from the ligatureliablous effects of foul clay in little clots and mobmauling on looks, that wrongcountered the tenderfoot an eveling near the livingsmeansuniumgetherum, Knockmaree, Comty Mea, reeling more to the right than he lurched to the left, on his way from a protoprostitute (he would always have a (stp!) little pigeoness somewhure with his arch girl, Arcoiris, smockname of Mergyt) just as he was butting in rand the coyner of bad times under a hideful between the rival doors of warm bethels of worship through his boardelhouse fongster, greeting for grazious oras as usual: Where ladies have they that a dog meansort herring? Sergo, search me, the incapable reparteed with a selfevitant subtlety so obviously spurious and, raising his hair, after the grace, with the christmas under his clutcharm, for Portsymasser and Purtsymessus and Pertsymiss and Partsymasters, like a prance of findingos, with a shillto shallto slipny stripny, in he skittled. Swikey! The allwhite poors guardiant, pulpably of balltossic stummung, was literally astundished over the painful sake, how he burstteself, which he was gone to, where he intent to did he, whether you think will, wherend the whole current of the after-noon whats the souch of a surch hads of hits of hims, urged and staggered thereto in his countryports at the caledosian capacity for Lieutuvisky of the caftan’s wineskin and even more so, during, looking his bigmost astonishments, it was said him, aschu, fun the concerned outgift of the dead med dirt, how that, arrahbejibbers, conspuent to the dominical order and exking noblish permish, he was namely coon at bringer at home two gallonts, as per royal, full poultry till his murder. Nip up and nab it!

36Polthergeistkotzdondherhoploits! Kick? What mother? Whose porter? Which pair? Why namely coon? But our undilligence has been plutherotested so enough of such porterblack lowneess, too base for printink! Perpending that Putterick O’Purcell pulls the coald stoane out of Winterwater’s and Silder Seas sing for Harreng our Keng, sept okt nov dez John Phibbs march! We cannot, in mercy or justice nor on the lovom for labaryntos, stay here for the residence of our existings, discussing Tamstar Ham of Ten-man’s thirst.

37JUSTIUS (to himother): Brawn is my name and broad is my nature and I’ve breit on my brow and all’s right with every fea-ture and I’ll brune this bird or Brown Bess’s bung’s gone bandy. I’m the boy to bruise and braise. Baus!

38Stand forth, Nayman of Noland (for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitensies of the deponent but ad-dress myself to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, pro — vocative and out direct), stand forth, come boldly, jolly me,- move me, zwilling though I am, to laughter in your true colours ere you be back for ever till I give you your talkingto! Shem Macadamson, you know me and I know you and all your she-meries. Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning since your last wetbed confession? I advise you to conceal yourself, my little friend, as I have said a moment ago and put your hands in my hands and have a nightslong homely little confiteor about things. Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick. You will need all the elements in the river to clean you over it all and a fortifine popespriestpower bull of attender to booth.

39Let us pry. We thought, would and did. Cur, quicquid, ubi, quando, quomodo, quoties, quibus auxiliis? You were bred, fed, fostered and fattened from holy childhood up in this two easter island on the piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place (plunders to night of you, blunders what’s left of you, flash as flash can!) and now, forsooth, a nogger among the blankards of this dastard century, you have become of twosome twiminds forenenst gods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch, you have reared your disunited king-dom on the vacuum of your own most intensely doubtful soul. Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Sheho-hem, that you will neither serve not let serve, pray nor let pray? And here, pay the piety, must I too nerve myself to pray for the loss of selfrespect to equip me for the horrible necessity of scan-dalisang (my dear sisters, are you ready?) by sloughing off my hope and tremors while we all swin together in the pool of So-dom? I shall shiver for my purity while they will weepbig for your sins. Away with covered words, new Solemonities for old Badsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Gee! Victory! Now, opprobro of underslung pipes, johnjacobs, while yet an adolescent (what do I say?), while still puerile in your tubsuit with buttonlegs, you got a hand-some present of a selfraising syringe and twin feeders (you know, Monsieur Abgott, in your art of arts, to your cost as well as I do (and don’t try to hide it) the penals lots I am now poking at) and the wheeze sort of was you should (if you were as bould a stroke now as the curate that christened you, sonny douth-the-candle!) repopulate the land of your birth and count up your progeny by the hungered head and the angered thousand but you thwarted the wious pish of your cogodparents, soph, among countless occasions of failing (for, said you, I will elenchate), adding to the malice of your transgression, yes, and changing its nature, (you see I have read your theology for you) alternating the morosity of my delectations — a philtred love, trysting by tantrums, small peace in ppenmark — with sensibility, sponsibility, passi-bility and prostability, your lubbock’s other fear pleasures of a butler’s life, even extruding your strabismal apologia, when legibly depressed, upon defenceless paper and thereby adding to the already unhappiness of this our popeyed world, scribblative! — all that too with cantreds of countless catchaleens, the man-nish as many as the minneful, congested around and about you for acres and roods and poles or perches, thick as the fluctuant sands of Chalwador, accomplished women, indeed fully edu-canded, far from being old and rich behind their dream of arri — visme, if they have only their honour left, and not deterred by bad weather when consumed by amorous passion, struggling to pos-sess themselves of your boosh, one son of Sorge for all daughters of Anguish, solus cum sola sive cuncties cum omnibobs (I’d have been the best man for you, myself), mutely aying for hat natural knot, debituary vases or vessels preposterous, for what would not have cost you ten bolivars of collarwork or the price of one ping pang, just a lilt, let us trillt, of the oldest song in the wooed woodworld, (two-we! to-one!), accompanied by a plain gold band! Hail! Hail! Highbosomheaving Missmisstress Morna of the allsweetheartening bridemuredemeanour! Her eye’s so glad-some we’ll all take shares in the —— groom!

40Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason, have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules, by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamitisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst but it never stphruck your mudhead’s obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I’ll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.

41O, by the way, yes, another thing occurs to me. You let me tell you, with the utmost politeness, were very ordinarily designed, your birthwrong was, to fall in with Plan, as our nationals should, as all nationists must, and do a certain office (what, I will not tell you) in a certain holy office (nor will I say where) during certain agonising office hours (a clerical party all to yourself) from such a year to such an hour on such and such a date at so and so much a week pro anno (Guinness’s, may I remind, were just agulp for you, failing in which you might have taken the scales off boilers like any boskop of Yorek) and do your little thruppenny bit and thus earn from the nation true thanks, right here in our place of burden, your bourne of travail and ville of tares, where after a divine’s prodigence you drew the first watergasp in your life, from the crib where you once was bit to the crypt you’ll be twice as shy of, same as we, long of us, alone with the colt in the curner, where you were as popular as an armenial with the faithful, and you set fire to my tailcoat when I hold the paraffin smoker under yours (I hope that chimney’s clear) but, slackly shirking both your bullet and your billet, you beat it backwards like Boulanger from Galway (but he combed the grass against his stride) to sing us a song of alibi, (the cuthone call over the greybounding slowrolling amplyheaving metamorphoseous that oozy rocks parapangle their preposters with) nomad, mooner by lamplight, antinos, shemming amid everyone’s repressed laughter to conceal your scatchophily by mating, like a thorough-paste prosodite, masculine monosyllables of the same numerical mus, an Irish emigrant the wrong way out, sitting on your crookedsixpenny stile, an unfrillfrocked quackfriar, you (will you for the laugh of Scheekspair just help mine with the epithet?) semi-semitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank!

42Shall we follow each others a steplonger, drowner of daggers, whiles our liege, tilyet a stranger in the frontyard of his happi-ness, is taking, (heal helper! one gob, one gap, one gulp and gorger of all!) his refreshment?

43There grew up beside you, amid our orisons of the speediest. in Novena Lodge, Novara Avenue, in Patripodium-am-Bummel, oaf, outofwork, one remove from an unwashed savage, on his keeping and in yours, (I pose you know why possum hides is cause he haint the nogumtreeumption) that other, Immaculatus, from head to foot, sir, that pure one, Altrues of other times, he who was well known to celestine circles before he sped aloft, our handsome young spiritual physician that was to be, seducing every sense to selfwilling celebesty, the most winning counterfeuille on our incomeshare lotetree, a chum of the angelets, a youth those reporters so pettitily wanted as game-fellow that they asked his mother for ittle earps brupper to let him tome to Tindertarten? pease, and bing his scooter ‘long and ‘tend they were all real brothers in the big justright home where Dodd lives, just to teddyfy the life out of him and pat and pass him one with other like musk from hand to hand, that mothersmothered model, that goodlooker with not a flaw whose spiritual toilettes were the talk of half the town, for sunset wear and nightfallen use and daybroken donning and nooncheon showing and the very thing for teasetime, but him you laid low with one hand one fine May morning in the Meddle of your Might, your bosom foe, because he mussed your speller on you or because he cut a pretty figure in the focus of your frontispecs (not one did you slay, no, but a continent!) to find out how his innards worked!

44Ever read of that greatgrand landfather of our visionbuilders, Baaboo, the bourgeoismeister, who thought to touch both him-mels at the punt of his risen stiffstaff and how wishywashy sank the waters of his thought? Ever thought of that hereticalist Marcon and the two scissymaidies and how bulkily he shat the Ructions gunorrhal? Ever hear of that foxy, that lupo and that monkax and the virgin heir of the Morrisons, eh, blethering ape?

45Malingerer in luxury, collector general, what has Your Low-ness done in the mealtime with all the hamilkcars of cooked vegetables, the hatfuls of stewed fruit, the suitcases of coddled ales, the Parish funds, me schamer, man, that you kittycoaxed so flexibly out of charitable butteries by yowling heavy with a hollow voice drop of your horrible awful poverty of mind so as you couldn’t even pledge a crown of Thorne’s to pawn a coat off Trevi’s and as how you was bad no end, so you was, so whelp you Sinner Pitre and Sinner Poule, with the chicken’s gape and pas mal de siŠcle, which, by the by, Reynaldo, is the ordinary emetic French for grenadier’s drip. To let you have your plank and your bonewash (O the hastroubles you lost!), to give you your pound of platinum and a thousand thongs a year (O, you were excruciated, in honour bound to the cross of your own cruelfiction!) to let you have your Sarday spree and holinight sleep (fame would come to you twixt a sleep and a wake) and leave to lie till Paraskivee and the cockcock crows for Danmark. (O Jonathan, your estomach!) The simian has no sentiment secre-tions but weep cataracts for all me, Pain the Shamman! Oft in the smelly night will they wallow for a clutch of the famished hand, I say, them bearded jezabelles you hired to rob you, while on your sodden straw impolitely you encored (Airish and naw-boggaleesh!) those hornmade ivory dreams you reved of the Ruth you called your companionate, a beauty from the bible, of the flushpots of Euston and the hanging garments of Maryle-bone. But the dormer moonshee smiled selene and the light — throwers knickered: who’s whinging we? Comport yourself, you inconsistency! Where is that little alimony nestegg against our predictable rainy day? Is it not the fact (gainsay me, cake-eater!) that, while whistlewhirling your crazy elegies around Templetombmount joyntstone, (let him pass, pleasegood-jesusalem, in a bundle of straw, he was balbettised after hay — making) you squandered among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a hottentot of dulpeners crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Yes? Yes? Yes? Holy wax and holifer! Don’t tell me, Leon of the fold, that you are not a loanshark! Look up, old sooty, be advised by mux and take your medicine. The Good Doctor mulled it. Mix it twice before re-pastures and powder three times a day. It does marvels for your gripins and it’s fine for the solitary worm.

46Let me finish! Just a little judas tonic, my ghem of all jokes, to make you go green in the gazer. Do you hear what I’m seeing, hammet? And remember that golden silence gives consent, Mr Anklegazer! Cease to be civil, learn to say nay! Whisht! Come here, Herr Studiosus, till I tell you a wig in your ear. We’ll do a whisper drive, for if the barishnyas got a twitter of it they’d tell the housetops and then all Cadbury would go crackers. Look! Do you see your dial in the rockingglass? Look well! Bend down a stigmy till I! It’s secret! Iggri, I say, the booseleers! I had it from Lamppost Shawe. And he had it from the Mullah. And Mull took it from a Bluecoat schooler. And Gay Socks jot it from Potapheu’s wife. And Rantipoll tipped the wink from old Mrs Tinbullet. And as for she was confussed by pro-Brother Thaco-licus. And the good brother feels he would need to defecate you. And the Flimsy Follettes are simply beside each other. And Kelly, Kenny and Keogh are up up and in arms. That a cross may crush me if I refuse to believe in it. That I may rock anchor through the ages if I hope it’s not true. That the host may choke me if I beneighbour you without my charity! Sh! Shem, you are. Sh! You are mad!