Chapter 8. This is the running page by page commentary , now (Thursday noon) complete. The line numbers which break up units of the long paragraphs are up to what I take to be subject-changes. 196: The washerwomen talk, close enough to bang heads. They want to hear about the crime, what HCE did in the park. His shirt is dirty: clean it well. He was under lock and key (and Loch Neagh), and it was in the news, as a trial. But time will tell. He's a rascal husband, pissing and making love.. 197: They talk about HCE, or his penis: head held high, representing the 4 provinces of Ireland, born a Scandinavian. Were they married? Yes, he "dug good tin" with her when he drove her home. But the other denies it: they weren't married, it was a matter of breaking her bar on his boat, without any wedding ring. [So it's about their first intercourse, unmarried.] 198: (To .09:) They finish celebrating HCE's ejaculation, like a fish in a boat crossing the bar in the "wet of his prow". (To .28:) They say ALP is just as bad, collecting girls (streams) from all around for him like a bawd; she sits and fiddles in her willows (at the source) with a music all "cunniform letters" but without "a band on" (unmarried). (To 199.11:) And they go back to HCE--he's a gloomy whale, but more a mountain, sitting there all stormy and firey and with weeds all over him, dreaming somberly... [i.e., first she just collects her streamlets and he sits there as a brooding mountain...] 199: (To .11, cont.:) ...HCE as mountain, gloomily fussing over births and deaths, seems in a trance. (To .27:) So we continue with the river, now a streamlet, who feeds him fishes and eggs etc. to stay his hunger till she grows old, though he scorns them, and she's lucky he doesn't dump a plateau on her toe (a landslide?). (To .33): and then she whistles a hymn (the orgasmic shout?) which would outdo the hen on the tower, but he says nothing. (To 200.16:) and she gets a little fuller, riding the romance like a corn-goddess... 200: (To .16, cont.): ALP enticing him, as slightly fuller river, she is in her green water that reproaches the church, and sings to the mountain, maybe with kids new born (at least with ducks). She sings Danish love-songs, and acts Romeo and Juliet, but he's Oom Botha (like Jarl van Hoother) and stays "deaf as a yawn". (to .33) But she stood in her door, smoking her pipe and enticing girls in to go to bed with him, "legging a jig" (see JJ Broadsheet October 1996 cover) to show them how and to teach them the way of a man with a maid etc., and offering them money. Isn't that amazing, to offer him girls "of no matter what sex" two at a time! .33¶: So the other asks to hear the rhyme ALP made, what was 201: ...written by one and read by two and found by a hen in the park (cf 111.05-9, and 94.06-12) (i.e., what the river's message is, the letter from the earth so to speak). .05-20: her song: she wants a new bankside (girdle), the old one worn out by sitting and waiting for HCE to "bore me down" as before; isn't there a rich man who'd like to pay for his washing and darning?; except that she's comfortable in her river-bed she'd off to the shore (to Clontarf) to feel the air in her face and the tide in her (river)mouth. .21¶: the washerwoman wants to hear more, it makes her sexually excited. And now comes the hatching part. How many little fish had she? 111, or thousands. She can't remember all the names (and they seem to appear by masturbation [the boxing bishop's infallible slipper] and to be christened by Kierkegaard and Ibsen.). 202: (to .04) and she'll have lots more children. (To .34): she was a gadabout, casting her pearls (perils) before lots of boys. But who was her first, and when was it (lots of implications of headwaters, Albert Nyanza and all)? She's not sure (or how many times, etc.), -- she was a slip of a thing and he a heavy lieabroad, like an oak across the stream. 203: (to .08) Her first time happened long before she ever dreamt she'd come down out of the Wicklow mountains and lie in marriage and toil with a landlubber, a Wellington type (but willing to nurse her). (to ) so then where was it? (To .15): but where did it happen? (To 204.05): Near Luggelaw (i.e., St. Kevin, as if this was the seduction by Cathleen which he rejects-- and here assigned mostly to him), and Michael Arklow did it (i.e. Shaun and Shem, Archangel Michael and "low" Shem, also Father Michael, see Glasheen on him), couldn't help plunging his hands in her hair and kissing her and "had to forget the monk in the man", telling her "never to" do just this. [see Edna O'Brien, A Pagan Place, for a different take on this kind of event]; 204: (to .04) (being seduced by Father Michael, ALP held her breath for two minutes (or the river was dry) but rose two feet in her own estimation and has stepped on stilts ever since (sexual awakening). (to .20): And before that, before she had pubic hair, bosom or big are (also: shrubbery, enough depth for a canooer, a Guinness barge) two boys (Scot and Pict) waded through her, and before that a hound licked her pee (she a mere streamlet) and before that she escaped her crib and in pools waved her legs in the air (while maiden hawthorns [aunts?] blushed and looked askance. .21¶: The other still wants to know the name, and other things about ALP (the river): did is her wave marcelled or did she wear a wig, are people longing or loathing as they get out of steamships onto boats on her, which side of her did people drop their gloves, clothes (i.e., the sexual theme again) in their flurry/hurry? The questioner complains that the other wants all the easy washing (nuns' stuff) while she has to do Veronica's napkin and Mrs. Magrath's underwear with its eau de Colo (arse-smell)--she has sinned! 205: (Lily Kinsella (Mrs. Magrath), whose underwear they wash)--she seems free and easy. College boys will sightsee them. The initials LK are on them, a leg is torn. One of the washerwomen is told to hasten and rinse them out and and continue the story. (So they seem to return to gossip about HCE): once "it" was in the papers (cf 196.20) (with hints about the 12 gossiping), even the snow on his head was disgusted with him, and everywhere you'd go you'd see his sign (his "ikom"--HCE? The M siglum?) upside down (ECH? M upside down?), and the cornerboys mocking him for a Guy Fawkes, and (somehow) skating round his scalp (it's about his head, anyway). They mock him for a builder ("Hausmann"), for being the ci and cock to ALP's hen. 206: (after "it" is in the papers, HCE is mocked) by the rabble (and mocked as the city). (.04-29) She (ALP) swore she'd be even with them (the gang, the snake, Sully [see 205.17]). So she frames a plan to "fake a shine" (Sinn Féin), borrowing a mailsack from Shaun the Post, and tidying up to join the masquerade. (There is byplay as the other presses her to get on with the story, but hasten slowly.) 206.05 is I think the crossover point among units--from here for a long way is ALP's plan to defend her man by giving the gifts of herself to everyone. .29¶: She let her hair down, and naked shampood herself with milk and mud, she greased her "keel" (her privates) and put compost on the mound of her tummy... 207: (ALP continues to deck herself out for her plan to get even with those who slander HCE): her hair is the river grasses, her jewelry the stones and pebbles. She makes up (with nature) and sends the two cousins (the two canals) to ask him if she can pass for a minute, she'll be back in a sprinkling (usual urinating imagery). So then she sets off out of her river basin, with her mailbag on her shoulder. .21¶: The other says hurry the description: was she naked, Negro, how much did she weigh, what did she wear? Here she is, and electrifying! .29¶ The other then says that she must (no election) do it, provide electricity, and so we see her (again small, a rerun of 199ff) as 'bushman woman', small... 208: (ALP, described in the fulness of her passing as she emerges from her basin, a bushman woman, is described): what she wore (i.e., what surrounds and is connected to her--fields, fishnets, haze: she dresses as Hera decked herself out for Zeus. 208.27par.: Everyone says she looked a little funny though they crowned her Queen of the Graces (or their charity queen)--maybe looking funny is why she muddied here mirror. And there were loafers (the 12, and the snake is present) ogling her and talking about her wavy hair. And they (connecting her with Princess May of Teck, who married one Duke after a fianced other died) think she looks pretty odd--a facelift or drugged. 209: (on ALP's appearance as she steps out, sequence beginning 205): the 12 and the Snake are there and think she looks surgically altered or drugged. .10¶: So one asks what's in her bag (sugar and spice...) and where'd she get it. (That is, when we look at ALP as Liffey we see what we saw when she was gnarlybird--lots of echoes of page 11). .17¶: And the (long) answer starts: she goes meandering along with her children beside her, giving them a Christmas box of spoils (the river tossing up goodies as it goes), and all her children about her, rich and poor, and given to by her. So here's to her, as she with cheer or jeer... [the list goes on to 212: It isn't easy to see exactly how each item is provided by the river, but some are, and those to whom things are given are usually characters from elsewhere in the book: it is ALP's, the river's, the feminine principle's contribution of the things of the world to everyone, sort of divied up according to just deserts (Tim Healy gets a nightmare or march hare). Mostly it's like Roger Angell's christmas poem in the New Yorker. ] 210: (continuing with how ALP distributes what's in her sack): (to .06)...with cheer and jeer she dives in and distributes her riches to all, pot luck to each of them, for remembrance. .06ff: and all the things the river provides to people 211: (the list of the river's gifts continues, with more names of the characters we know. 212: (the list of the river's gifts concludes: menstruation to girls, testicles to boys. (What the river gives seems to me to have replaced the project of going forth to rebut the slander, but maybe they are the same and that's the point). .20¶--back to the washerwomen: the listener is amazed at all it was, asks for soap floated across the (now wider) river to her, reports that she doesn't get much on her side, only scraps of daft reading matter as if from Swift (sent them, or drifted by on the river), and craziness like the boy's imitation of the Slovene priest preaching the creation of the world and Adam in Italian... 213: (to .11) ...and the comicality of indexing, and all this exciting the miller's wheel (I think--"racy"). One of them's hands are cold with the washing soda and whisky and soda, and as the water darkens she/they lose the "pattern chayney" under the water (i.e., they start to get less able to observe, start to sink into their final state), but nonetheless (i.e.,what remains, a receptivity, probably the point being can still hear if can't still see) the listening washerwoman says go on, I love a talker, tell me more (about the river) and "thick is the life for mere", .11¶ (to 21) So the one speaking says this is the end of the tale, and what it amounts to is "the he and she of it" (i.e., return from the focus on the river to that on the relationship, with which it started--literally, I guess, 'at the end of the tale we come to the he and she'). End of the tale coming, they sense themselves turning to tree and stone (one sees self upside down pictured in the river, the other feels her chair, flesh, turning to ashes (?--gone ashley), their backs hurt, Brenda Maddox says the Waterhouse's Clock business is about Nora's defloration, but at the Angelus and Sechselauten bell there's a sense of new beginning ("she conceived of the Holy Spirit" and Tennyson's wild New Year's bells). (To 214.10 ): They lay their clothes on the banks, turning them (the river widening, they hearing each other less well): Joyce and Nora's first-night sheets, the butcher's apron (not washed, or at least still dirty, so thieves won't steal it) of the Mookse (158.30) and Shaun the meatman (67.15,.25), the 39 Articles [is the Church of England something the river produces in its transformations? Cf 534.12 to think about it], also (somehow, see "cold" note) the 29 Rainbow Girls, one of whom is out in the cold. These have become her children (one seems illegitimate, born to a nun in the convent--or maybe Jesus, since "Jossiph knows"). At any rate, these articles have become ALP's children, and the washerwomen wonder where they are now--some alive, some dead, more emigrated, to Spain , or to America where the Yankee Irishmen have big heads... 214: (with the washing laid out, we see how much, from the gifts of the river, is lost near the end to time and the river's damaging flow): (to .10): Brigid's beads become only a church memorial and one bead found in a urinal (the high hopes of the church are dashed one way or another), and Wally Meagher's needed breeches (see 211.11 and 61.20) are reduced to buckles and hooks. And they reflect: Pray for the world and the souls, we're shadows all! Haven't you heard that before, that river's lesson from bank to bank? Yes, and if I didn't attend it to it it was because I closed my ears (earwadding). (To .30 ) Suddenly they think they see "the great Finnleader"on his statue in his kimono like the Liberator's cloak, but decide it's only a little horse and an illusion anyway (or memory), of some riding academy or early flirting fun (whatever "sugarstuck pouts" are), and fall to insulting (for big asses) each other and complaining about their aches and pains (and how they slave away to wash the flannels of Christ, the tennis playing son who's supposed to be the one to wash away the sins of the world), and again insult, one saying the other got her limp from some sexual escapade back when the Duke of Clarence visited Dublin. (To 215.01): But they think they see it (Finn, HCE, O'Connell) again, and it scares them [it seems to me to echo Hamlet seeing the ghost--isn't "See there" close?--, but Vince Cheng doesn't say so], and decide it's only a blackberry bush or the ass of Mamalujo, those four old codgers (remember, they thought it was a horse, first big, then little). 215: (to .11): (after deciding the vision of "the great Finnleader" is only an illusion, or the ass), they see lights as sea, fantasize a lover returning from the Indies, know they're changing to tree and stone (to meet and part once more--?), and say goodbye as the shadows thicken--they're going home slowly. ¶12: But they turn first to reflect on ALP, the queer old friend, and then on Dublin itself, HCE, the foster-father of the abuilding city while the dams go up on the river. He "married his markets", his rainbow girls, but in the end there was only one spouse, and it is fairyland and repetition, Viconian succession but free. The river has flowed, does and will flow on, and in terms of history the Northman's invasion made the Irishman's place, but person place and thing remain always themselves, Sanskrit or Latin, and he/the city is al three, goat citizen of Dublin. In fact, he has goat-paps to suckle his twin sons and symbolically adopt them (as St. Patrick wouldn't), in "what all men" feel [surely echo of Ulysses' "word known to all men"]: namely "Hot", while the daughters twitter ("tittering" surely involving tits, those paps, bosom continued) nearby and (with the suggestion of his being tempted by them) the chain continues. 215.31¶: but as this picture of succession and repetition and the chain of generations making civilization gets expressed, the river runs by, its endless fertility and unfolding confusing us with its complaining, its flow. The animals (bats and fieldmice and hawks) take over as night falls, they wonder if Tom Malone is still out (see 331.12--I think maybe has to do with sex and night), and they turn into their tree and stone. As they do, (saying now "talk save us" .34,--cf 213.07.10-- instead of "Lord save us", .28), it seems the tale told has been or is of Shaun or Shem and the daughtersons, the next generation who both are the same anew again (stem or stone) and also "the living sons or daughters" of the founding pair. [to whom we turn in Book II, as always the next subject introduced at the end of the previous chapter].