On structure: modification, virtually new, in 1994: (no doubt in 1997 this
will, like everything else, get wildly revised, but here it is for
something to start with):

General structural remarks:

1. start and end with poems, on how nogood Mark is and on how Tristy's the
one to go on with.

2. to 386.12 is intro of $X and they watching T&I oblivious, working up to
the kiss [which doesn't happen for a long time yet] and thinking about the
past. a] Par. 384.06 is good to look at 3. starting 386.12, with the intro
"Johnny", the 4 as nice old heladies, are reminded by what they're watching
of all the old times, and especially of the replacements of HCE, figured as
Mark and Tristan and Iseult. This is very plain in the vignette where at
the equivalent of 389.21 seeing them makes it all come back to them. First
they think of HCE in his grandeur as the auctioneer going to the horse
show, auction and horse show, their older world remembered, and they think
how it came about as volcanic cataclysms (HCE and the 3 and 2 in the park,
though the actual line is a late addition, 387.13), but then they think
about the transitions, drownings and failures and finally how "the new
world presses" and Mark is out and Tristan in.

That is, to 388.10 the key image (besides the volcanoes) is Martin
Cunningham (as Mark) drowning and Tristan replacing him. And then they give
their history lessons, very old fashioned and seeing everything in terms of
invaders in 1132 (or 1169, which they mix up) and being given at the
Queen's Colleges and TCD, Protestant, or at the Unitarian medical college:
their period of lectureship, and its content, is what comes back to them
when they see T&I--his gazing into her eyes seems like another, new version
of the same HCE courtship, a reminder of the 3 and the 2 and all: see
387.13 and 389.23, the "explutor" etc.

That is, I think that rather than Tristan taking over from HCE, what the 4
see is that what Tristan is doing is simply this time around's version of
what always happens, the event which involves 1,2 and 3 and invasion and
all the forms of taking over which they think of partly in terms of
drownings and Mark's loss, and partly of kissing and Tristan's gain. The
event "comes eddying back to them" in short.

[I think the single names at starts of particular paragraphs don't announce
a new narrative voice but rather just say 'we've been talking about him'
and prepare to go on to change of subject. That does seem true in part:
Johnny discussed after introducing the 4 and intercutting with T&I kissing,
then he, John, named 386.12 but par. concerns Matt to 387.11, and then John
and Mark (Cunningham) concludes 388.10 and Mark is named; then it goes on
about the 4 of them intercut with T&I]

After the reflections on all the transitions Tristan and Isolde bring up
for them, they turn essentially to thinking about the loss side as against
the Tristan gain side: this centers on divorce and the kind of Prankquean
image of the Prankquean running away and leaving rainwater on the floor,
and there being separation, like the way document number 2 amounted to
separation: that is, it's been about the invader's gain, now it's about the
King Mark loss with which they identify and which, while it's got a funny
side to it, is still a sad kind of parting "by decree absolute".

389.31 seems to move to Lally and Tarpey, i.e. Luke and his divorce, and he
is named at 390.34;

and it goes on more about the others and women, Johnny afraid of the full
bottom, Mark peeing on himself, Dion (whichever he is) attempting
familiarities as he dies. And 392.14 it asks where we leave Matt, turns out
to be under ground, dead, and everybody devoured as a communion of bread
and salt and water. And at the end of this Matt is named, 393.04, in a
short paragraph which finally says "Poor ...Cunningham" and closes out "Ay
Ay." And this feels like a change in tone and direction.]

393.07-394.19 is difficult to put in structure. I guess it introduces the
observation of the kiss and response, by again treating the 4 not as having
history so much as being familiar spirits, observers, on the ship and
watching.

394.19-397.06: the kiss and the response of the 4.

397.07-end: goodbye to the 4 in their old age home, and working up to the
song at the end, and it itself.

Then the paragraph by paragraph summary:

Week 6, February 11, 1993, paragraph by paragraph notes.--this is heavily
rewritten and improved in '94 especially from 388 on.

383.01, the poem: Mocking king Mark, old buzzard like Parnell absurd
looking for his shirt, barkless, who thinks he's "cock of the wark" but in
fact is just a rooster flapping around looking for a place to land from the
Ark. The point of view of the narrator in his swearing by "Wreneagle
Almighty", the wren riding on the back of the eagle. So, "Fowls, up!"
(which I think is "Up guards"), Tristy's the man to get "her" under control
and "make his money and mark" thereby.

383.15¶. From Howth, overhead, the seaswans (connected with Shem, I think)
sang that song, when they tasted the big kiss (with Germanic/Dutch echoes)
of "Trustan" (irony, since not trustworthy) and Usolde (irony, since she
will wind up saying "you sold me").

383.19¶. "And there they were," the 4, $X, as the ship moved and God's
spirit moves on the face of the waters, listening in to the birds and the
auspices and sports and probably A Royal Divorce, all sighing and sobbing
(they themselves are also the birds of the air). Lots of Moore songs, and
"Moyle Ahoy" in there.

384.06¶. (this paragraph intercuts descriptions of the 4 and what they see,
it is just the vignettes interlocked I think. I'll mark changes between the
two descriptions with a line number). The 4 described, with the tag lines,
the four of us, pass the fish. They are connected with Dutch (and a little
German). They listen (with their palms in their hands) (.17) to the kissing
and palpably improper fondling, how he's the only one of her choice, as he
whispers how "one was wips...and two was lips", i.e. sex talk, about male
and female parts. And (.35) they remember how they used to be (i.e.,
similar), in the past of Boucicault and Tut-ankh-amen and the politics of
whiteboys etc. and even Dean Swift and Ragnar Lodbrok. What they see brings
the dear prehistoric scenes back fresh as yore, with (385.21) Tristan and
his toothy face and she asks for a song of illicit love. And there they
were in the fine night, by the light of the moon...spoon...honeymoon, the
effect being of a shocking situation, with him kissing away like the
warrior/mariner/foreigner. And there they were (.34) --the 4 seem not only
to be the birds, but the ship as well-- looking in through the porthole
unable to hear all the "horrid rudy noises", tired, but mouths watering,
iambic pentameter-ing and decasyllabic-ing and wishing for the old times,
the falling Humpty Dumpty times , for a cup of kindness yet, for 4 tumblers
of "woman squash" (see lemon squash issue, PCO). A terrific paragraph,
sense of yearning and observing etc, and the dopey young people modern and
oblivious. [Note that though it's always about the 4, at 385.17-20 we have
Mark's "Ah ho!" and Matthew and Mark are specified, and then in the last
unit devoted to them, it's still all the 4 but Luke and John are specified
(386.06).

386.12¶. Starts "Johnny" (not sure means he's talking, or a subject to be
worked up to?--see Archive p. 40, the word is added revising this fair
copy, and it's especially clear in early drafts that the succeeding
paragraph is basicaly about Matt going to the races). Then starts a long
rambling sentence (386.12-387.11) the essence of which is easier to see in
FDV, Archive pp. 28-9, or the second draft 40-1, and is that there they
were the 'dear old heladies' looking nice and respectable with their fathom
glasses (maybe for the races, and maybe the "pantometer" of .5) and tall
hats, like the Marquis or like the auctioneer in that place that arranges
the auctions (and the narrator stumbles around that a bit:), Smith, no not
Smith, North, or James, JP, going to the horse show with the people from
England and American visitors ('how do you do's' interjected) in his grey
hat and with his glasses 'to find out all the horses'--i.e., the connection
(in this very stream of consciousness passage) is that the 4 have the hat
and glasses and so are like this figure who also did.

In the finished text the structure the same but the set of similes go that
they're like the Marquis except they extrude saltwater, or (to paraphrase):
they are like the auctioneer at the place beside Dame Street where [is {I
think the only word we need to supply}] the O'Connell Statue is, the
auctioneer that arranges auctions of colleges, like the auctioneer James H.
Tickell the JP who sells all the statues, [i.e., to repeat, they're [like
that auctioneer, {.27}] going to the horseshow along with another fellow
and with everybody erupting like volcanoes all around them (and various
other descriptors of them), in his 7 garments in order to "find out all the
improper colleges"--interjections of 'how de dos', the JP Tickell greeted
as "Elevato" and "Mr Dane James?" and answering arrogantly "Get out of my
way!", tieing him to HCE behavior--and, Viking as he is, to find out "the
whole sweepstakings". [It's a very stream of consciousness passage, of a
sort I don't notice too often in FW though much more common in Ulysses. But
what do I know.]

[That sentence focussed on Matthew Gregory.] Now 387.11, in the rest of
paragraph Johnny (who must continue talking) focusses on 'poor Marcus' and
'poor Johnny', and thinks of how our seaborn isle came to be from volcanos
and drownings--though with a strong sense that it is in fact HCE we're
talking about, since the "explutor" is surrounded with "three andesiters
[volcanic crags in the Andes, cf ] and the two pantellarias [Mediterranean
volcanic islands]", and maybe even a sense that we are oriented to the
death of Finn, via the specification of 1132, which was in the early drafts
and is as McHugh says on 13 his death 283 x 4 for the Masters, whom we are
after all talking about here. And that's how it was--the deep sweeps over
bones (.33). And the widow murmurs, and Mark is thrown out into the yard
and Tristan comes in at the window and Iseut tumbles--off with the old and
on with the new, except the 4 are sympathetic to Mark's loss; it's like A
Royal Divorce, with Josephine (Tristan?), Mary Louise (Mark?), Napoleon
(Iseault?)--[the gender reversals would seem to go along with the reversals
for Mamalujo themselves, the "heladies".] And the concluding comment seems
to be "Caught" ("Fing"), the SOB's, Save us.

Basically, Matt is reporting on Mark and Johnny reflecting on how things
are estabished (our island is born) by the HCE explosion, like a volcano,
but how then he, like Martin Cunninghman (or Pharoah) is drowned and
replaced by "Wehpen", 'nephew', who like Parnell runs arund in his
nightshirt, and "Tuesy tumbles" and his trysting has no end. They're sad
about the replacement of the old order.

388.10¶. Marcus continues talking. He goes on about naval disasters and
drownings, (especially Martin Cunningham, whose name is a theme repeating
in this treatment of the 4: 387.28; 388.13; 393.05)"And after that..." a
series of times (usually breaking Mamalujo talk and T & I talk); his
passage is full of Protestants and finally comes down to T's "Roman
Catholic arms" by contrast; and the 4 seem to be talking on the telephone
or the radio .

There was the Flemish armada (cf. 397.24, where it gets clear that this is
phlegmish because they're sick with whooping cough and think about water
and being congested a lot), 1169,--they say 1132--and Patrick, Kevin, LOT
and TAB, and Lapoleon on his white horse, all invaders like Tristan, to
whom they turn parallelly at 388.22. They read all these things happening
in 1132, including the Norman invasion etc., i.e., the death of the old
Finn order and the intrusion of the new--I have a note that Lawrence
O'Toole is supposed to be born in 1132 (making him an appropriate age when
the Normans came in 1169). And then (subject changes a little) they used to
give lectures to collegians (esp. TCD), droning along, and the subject
seeming anarchy "out of" doxology, i.e. on the "matter of Erin", the
churches Kill-each-other etc. [Sentence ends, subject continues that] These
were woman's history, and Protestant, (the previous sentence was about
Latimer repeating himself, this about Fatima repeating herself), on the
spirit of nature as divinely developed in pseudotelephony: Marcus is very
ironic about this feminism, saying 'weep for the hour when Eve leaves her
bower'. And the paragraph ends that it all came back to them, the slow
stammerers, to hear Tristan kissing and cuddling her after the "gouty old
galahat" HCE with his characterizing pair and trio (cf 387.13), in his
(Tristan's) Roman Catholic arms, while he gazed in her eyes. "Napoo" ends
the ¶, as "Sabbus" before. ?

Then a unit 389.31-393.03 in which the 4 respond to this view with being
sorry over the past, first in general to 390.34, then in particular, with
the 4 tag-lines and a great many repetitive themes giving the picture of
the 4 each with his particular misery: Johnny not keeping a woman happy;
Mark making water; Luke (I guess--it's Dion Boucicault) eating a bad crab;
Matt waiting for the end at the poorhouse. And a reference to Cunningham,
who has been one of the themes and the main one drowned, ties it clear back
to 387.28, so that is really the main unit.

389.31¶. Goes on, saying "dear oh dear", reflecting 'that's how it is, the
man embraces her when the woman gives him the eye', and thinking how much
sadness it brings up for them (and then he enumerates all the bad things in
the past) , Lally when he lost his half a hat in or reflecting feudal
times--the feudal castle has been lost. The early drafts make plain that
this is all simply being sorry for what happened, which they should try to
forget: the massacres of Danes, the shooting of the Russian General, poor
old Viking (and Jarl-like) Earwicker in the lighthouse which has gone out
[i.e., these are fallen authority figures they are identifying with and
feeling sorry for], and Skelly with the belts, and the grand marriage, and
he couldn't stop laughing over "Tom Tim Tarpey, the Welshman" [.13--Luke
and the Tom Tim part is Tim Finnegan? [In the sentence, "he", whoever he
is, is "repeating himself", "contradicting", maybe "earing his wick" and
"liggen", certainly "couldn't stop laughing"--that's the structure.])

This last sentence was lighthouse, now 390. 16ff they're waves on shore or
creek, and think sadly of how they were divorced (with echoes of 'parting
on the best of terms' but also 'Auld Lang Syne'), and how they miss their
wives (image of their peeing on the floor), how it's been like a
pilgrimage, how they don't think so well of themselves or what's happened
('the good go and the wicked is left over'); a little joke, i.e. 'that's
the way of it', answer 'as the holy maid said to the hangman', and end with
sad connected fragments on the divorce: "Woman. Squash. Part.", meaning
"Lebens Quatch", Life's Nonsense, "by decree absolute." It's really a
wonderful paragraph, especially 390.15-33.

390.34¶. Continues on with various things they remember and are sad about,
i.e., various failures. (Luke is mentioned, in one word, but doesn't seem
to be he particularly talking). They remember a woman (Mrs. Justice
Squalchman) in a full wig around 1132 or 1169 etc at an auctioneer's court,
and Johnny frightened of her and divorced by her because he was slow at
"backscratching" this "materfamilias" (i.e. insufficiently attentive or
ingratiating). And Marcus is felt sorry for because he made wind and water,
and forgot to sign a request (to herself, i.e., the same woman) before
saying grace. And then there was poor Dion Poosycoomb, who is another
variation of Cunningham but must be Luke by elimination) who (with much
backing and filling and excuse) is said to have attempted hunnish (German,
but it means "she") familiarities while sick from eating a bad crab, and
sitting counting the buttons. And Matt just sitting there face to the wall
without energy at the poorhouse waiting for the end.

The section ends with the 4 again trying to remember the most basic thing,
who made the world, and sinking into a snore--Ah dearo dearo dear! sort of
like the end of I.3, p. 74.

For the rest, the Mamalujo description continues but is interrupted with
the T&I passage, as follows: 393.07-394.20, the 4, now thoroughly
feminized, count the buttons and rise on their mistletoes and hang around
the ships following "Foehn, again" (I think Tristan, but maybe they're
hanging around HCE as Sen Patrick)--at that point to 395.02 is inserted
from the T&I vignette, how Tristan clears his throat and carries on about
reuniting in the Allself. Then to 395.16 we return to Mamalujo, as the 4
look in the honeymoon cabins (another version of "hunnish familiarities"),
but almost at once (at 395.16) we return to a point earlier in the T&I
vignette where Isolde is pleased with the "tiny quote" he has made, which
the 4 see. At that point, to 396.33 is the T&I kiss from the vignette; but
at 396.34 the Mamalujo story takes back over, see JJA56.46, as the 4 now
think of Isolde's "beautiful name", the "beautiful maiden name in the
dream" (it having come directly from their looking in the honeymoon
windows), and then (beginning 397.7) the last shot of them (though with a
little intrusion from T&I at 398.07-.11), "singing up the wet fire
register" and being cold and eating and saying grace but basically ending
up singing Auld Lang Syne.

393.07¶. Still, in the days of Sitric and Vanhomrigh, in Dublin, where I
met Oldpatrick (HCE--at end of sentence McHugh says he's Sen Patrick, St.
Pat's fosterfather, so yes, HCE), amidst fish and soup and his bucket of
water and his broadcast honors, they (393.14) were always there 'with
assisting grace' [and they also are a "she", I think, with a beautiful
maiden name, but maybe the 'she' is Isolde, at whom they are looking--I
doubt it though, and think they go from singular to plural as from male to
female], remembering Shem and Shawn and their 4 husbands (since they are
female now), counting the buttons and getting up late at night frightened
(393.21) looking out for the Boston Transcript (i.e., do they have a role
in looking for the letter?), all mystified and driven crazy by the way the
wind wheels the schooner around (i.e., we seem to be reminded we're on the
boat, and see sloop at 394.11, though also mostly with the family at
Chapelizod I think, as kind of domestic spirits)--they stand behind the
door and settle on the tureen, etc., and do their tag-moves: put on half
hat, repeat themselves, dodge the cook, go to the toilet (and maybe a hint
of homosexuality in that, in 'bit of brown'), and finally retreat to Old
Patrick again and doctor Walker (maybe Johnny Walker, have a drink?, but
see Glasheen).

It is one sentence from 394.12-395.24: the grammatical outline which we
have to tinker a little (see below) is: : after that they used to be
flapping around the ships, the 4 of them,

and he selling himself(having cleared his throat till he was trustworthy),
his subjects being their passion grand etc or how (now imitated direct
discourse) when I look at thee i sense immaterialities, whereupon immanence
exteriorizes in solid bodies with however intuitions of reunited selfdom,

Johnny and the others, "and their" [i.e. "with their"] pair of eyes peering
into the cabins and the toilet chambers, listening to see the ladies all
improper (and a lass and lad courting, she thanking him for the quote which
made everything suit) under their familiarities, [they, the 4,] by
preventing grace forgetting to say grace.

This is plainer from the drafts, which I now copy:

The grammar of the difficult sentence 394.12-395.24, help from the drafts.
JJA56.46 (first fair copy of the vignette, well before incorporating T&I
into it--I include very little of the overlay to this draft):

...and then they had their night tentacles and there they used to be
hanging around the waists of the ships, the clipperbuilts [and the
fourmasters] and Lally and Roe [and another fellow and he's telling him
that one about the goose and the golden egg] and Johnny Mac Gory, dear
Mister John, and all the other annalists, the steamships and the
women-o'-war and playing ladies' foursome and their bottlegreen eyes and
peering in through the steamy windows into the honeymoon cabins on board
the big steamadories [made by Fumadory] and the saloon ladies' toilet
chambers lined with prawn silk and rubbing off the salty cataract off the
windows listening to see all the hunnishmooners and the toilet ladies [most
improper in lovely mourning toilet] in [with] all their familiarities
saying their grace before steamadory so pass the pogue for grace sake Amen.

the next fair copy, JJA56.53-4:

...and after that they had their night tentacles and there they used to be
hanging [flapping] around the waists of the ships [, as tired as they
were,] the clipperbuilt and the fourmasters and Lally and Roe and he
telling him that one about a goose a lay a goldeny egg and Johnny Mac Gory,
dear mister John, and all the other analist, the steamships and the
women-o'-war and playing ladies' foursome and their bottlegreen eyes and
peering in, so they say, through the steamy windows into the honeymoon
cabins on board the big steamadories made by Fumadory and the saloon
ladies' modern toilet chambers lined over prawn silk and rub off the salty
catara off a windows listening to see all the hunnishmooners and the ladies
all improper in a lovely mourning toilet under all their familarities,
saying their grace before steamadory [chambadory] so pass the pogue for
grace sake, Amen.

note "rubbing", how it became "rubbi" and then "rub", one of the
grammatical nubs.

So the absolute bare-bones grammatical outline is: "they used to be hanging
around...and playing...and peering...and rub[bing] off the salty cataract
off the windows listening to see all the hunnishmooners..., saying their
grace...so pass the pogue...."

Commentary: The interweaving of the ships and the subjects with "and"s is
stream-of-consciousness-like ungrammatical, and there ought to be a comma
after "windows" to keep it plain that it isn't the windows that are
listening, but otherwise, except for "rub", it's grammatical in its first
part, with the first draft even making sense via "another fellow" of
someone telling something (and indeed also making the number up to 4,
Lally, Roe, other fellow, Johnny), which is the opening for the insertion
of Tristan's seduction speech.

The finished version allows that "telling" at 395.2 to obscure the fact
that "Jolly MacGolly..." is supposed to be the continuation of the
interwoven Mamalujo/ships subject, as it would be if you just dropped it
back in after "egg" at 394.27, or (leaving out the other fellow who tells
about the goose entirely) after "and" at 394.19. Thus "telling" improperly
duplicates "selling" and makes it seem as if Jolly MacGolly is an object
rather than another subject, and without that confusion the sentence makes
sense down to the next insertion, where again it goes a little astray. That
is, the 4 remain rightly "listening...to see ladies...all improper"

(with some confusing grammar inserted with "a lass...shee") "for [i.e.
dressed improperly for] the sighinspirer...and swaying and saying [i.e.,
'they are improper and saying'] thanks for the quote which made everything
delightfully and perfectly, beautifully yours".

"under their familiarities" [i.e. "all improper...under the familiar
appearance]--and this is followed by "by preventing grace, forgetting to
say grace": without the comma it would make sense, that the 4 remain
'listening to see ladies all improper under their familiarities, by
preventing grace forgetting to say grace", meaning that preventing grace
prevents them from saying grace (presumably distracted by the ladies). And
as it is, it almost does.

For more exposition of theme:

394.12--"And after that" we see them flapping around the ship, in the wake
of Finnegan (that is, present at resurrection, I guess), among ships and
with Lally and Roe (?), like bugs, while (394.19--here we turn again to the
T&I vignette, see line 57 in its file read by Magellan) Tristan (saying
"issle, issle", I guess, which Hart says is her pee sound but I wonder) has
the project of selling himself to Isolde ("he selling him", though
conceivably it means making the case he's supposed to make for Mark--but I
doubt it after much thought). Tristan clears his throat and takes a breath
(she raises a receptive eyebrow at him and left no doubt in his mind) and
he can then be Tristan/trustworthy, so it's as if he takes his sister soul
in his brother hand, and he tells Isolde stuff: in the Vignette it is
purely the 'I think we will blend in the Allsoul' business, but here he
adds other arguments like the way of a man with a maid, and that she
shouldn't give up the goose that laid the golden egg (him) and how creepy
the Jarl was with the Prankquean when she opened herself to his choosing
(and/or maybe that Mark will have only Hobson's Choice, will have to like
it or lump it), and maybe he appeals to her that they can found a race
together, like Heber and Heremon the progenitors (though I think they were
brothers?). And then he does his heavy-duty seduction talk: when I put my
two eyes on you, I sense the profundity of immaterialities, whereupon the
immanence of what is Itself Alone by a universal urge projects itself
outward into separate bodies which however cause Pearl-White-like, Perils
of Pauline-like passionpanting intuitions of reuniting in the universal
self--i.e., down at the bottom we are one soul, the Itself Alone containing
both of us! i.e., narsty Tristan meeting the idol Isolde [i.e., I think of
fucking and getting off when I look at you]--

Returning to the Mamalujo part, as explained above, Jolly MacGolly and
Prester John, the annalists, the steamships and ladies and schoolmasters,
the 4 peer in on honeymooners and ladies, etc., and listen in committee
over the door to see the improper ladies and especially Isolde, as she and
Tristan court, he the sigh inspirer, and she thanks for the song (from back
on 385.23!, or the quote he just gave which made all delightful; and all
this looking amounts to "preventing grace", a grace which comes to the 4 by
which they don't say their own grace and instead say "pass the poghue"
before getting on the soul boat for resurrection. And they respond to what
they see, Ay, ay (no "!" this time, as there isn't at 397.6 either).

In short, the 4 flap in their sad way around the ship, pruriently looking
in and seeing improper ladies seducing and being sexily polite, and it
prevents their saying grace--they say pass the kiss instead, quaking and
shaking in fright at all this youthful sexual energy.

395.26¶ So then "a pretty thing" happened, the kiss, as Tristan drives his
tongue down her gullet. I'm not supersure what happens: "his flattering
hand...handshut his duckhouse": note that the Jarl "clopped his rude hand
to his eacy hitch and he ordured...her to shut up shop" [23.03-5]. I think
these are opposites, the flattering hand [linked as McHugh points out to
the "Stuttering Hand," which I take to be of masturbation] bringing about
that sexual "crisis" in Isolde which is exactly denied by the Jarl.
Different kinds of shutting, it feels to me, perhaps because a "shop" and a
"duckhouse" are different? Maybe the point is that this kind of conclusion
to the romance is just as ultimately uncommunicative as the conclusion of
the Prankquean episode, with its arrangement for different realms--this
turns it all into a football match and has Tristan score a goal. Maybe not
so different from the Jarl's shutting up shop and being proud of himself.
On the other hand, maybe it means he shut up and started to act (and see
ideas on setting the choke).

396.04¶. After an exclamation of "All right!", the injunction to "Up guards
and at them", including "upright" and "add them" ("Aris" in Irish means
"Again"). And the narrator seems to ask our candid assessment of the
morality of it all, with regard to Isolde. We have the beautiful empty-head
(this paragraph doesn't specify also that we have the hunk) and who could
blame her when what she's got to look forward to, the ewe, is the milkless
old ram (I think of the "bull of the Cassidy's" 45.21-2, with all the
butter in the horns, meaning no milk), a CofE Protestant, not worth hen
shit. No, if the whole tale is told, whatever the culpability or
gullibility involved, the two 'twooned' (two became one) [i.e., it was just
in the cards and who can really expect anything else?], and were doing the
old 1234 (cf counts, as of buttons, 393.18). This is a "fiveful" (frightful
only?) moment for the timekeeper (cf. 395.15) old guys, until the tongue
plopped out of her mouth (a double sense of the plugging spark: the kiss
continues till momentum carries them further, and 'till he had pity' when
the tongue "spared" the throat and he stops). And of course there's a
strong sense that the tongue is just a metaphor anyway. The narrator seems
to have stood back a little from the 4, who are upset (if that's what
"fiveful" means, 'frightful'--but they go right on to think it's terrific),
while the narrator says what else could you expect.

396.34¶. The 4 think it was terrific, "and after that" they get forgetful,
go back to counting buttons (which this time add up to Clontarf, i.e.,
meditating on history and its ancient moments of change) but it seems to be
in order to remember her name, as in a dream. They are now "happily buried"
instead of "happily married", yet we can still say "and there she was", the
lovely sight of the Colleen Bawn "as for days galore" (i.e., as if she
would live forever), but suggesting too "days of yore", i.e., what Matthew
(whose sigh "Ay. Ay." is) and the others are stuck with thinking about,
days of the Colleen Bawn asthore.

Feels like the end of a unit, which would extend from 394.19
(mid-paragraph) to 397.06, and a pretty straightforward unit: the kiss has
been worked up to and given, the 4 have worried about but also think it
"torrific", so that it becomes what they count buttons about and think of
as what characterizes life. From here we will bid farewell to the 4 in
their afterlife and work up to their song to, of, for and by Isolde, and
wind up going to John, Shaun and Book III.

397.07¶. So it turns to how the 4 are in their nursing home/afterlife. It
reminds me how they used to be "in lethargy's love", singing after the
housework, complimenting themselves (.14-15), all dolled up in their
pathetic clothes and little bowls of flour and milk, "with" such actions as
(.19) "hold take hand and nurse", and touch the food and wait and prompt
Mark to ignore the skeleton but 'pass the teeth for choke sake' [i.e., they
try to think about salvation and grace not death but it gets mixed up with
false teeth], [and it all happens .23] "when it so happen" they were all
sick (sycamore, Egyptian dead) after [note that on the model of this next
verb the others are truncated too] "ete a bad cramp" (cf. the 392 passage)
and "backscrat[ching]" bedsores and before going to sleep "read[ing]"
through their spectacles "for further auspices" and "for to regul their
reves" a letter or two every night (cf. Shem 180) in their old book, the
four Gospels by "the Mrs Shemans", (who clearly is/are the "heladies" of
386.17, i.e. themselves) dressed a certain way and the book described, "and
[by] Lally [the Apocrypha], [and I think the next phrase is governed by
"that reminds me now how" .07, with an implicit "of"] i.e. 'that reminds me
of all the good that they did" , the rigorists, for the evangelists and
apocryphists and annalists, [they who are] old bagabroth, low and high,
single and clan and everybody and individually "a mamalujo". [and it ends
with a toast] "To this/these champion[s], HCE and his landsmen and to the
selling of same, going going gone.

They are sick old age and the afterlife, they read the gospels they wrote
(and echo Shem), they are male and female, they are all and several and one
and singly one Mamalujo. And this paragraph has been a celebration of them
after they have seen their replacement, the replacement of all of us, T&I.
And I think the auction business climaxes here too, i.e., like Parnell they
are buyable, and the question is if one in fact gets their price.

398.07¶. So they go back to where they left off before turning to the 4
themselves at 397.07, the last paragraph, and that's where he (Tristan) got
down to the death and the love embrace, and they say now let's "ran on"
(make a rann, I think, as well as) to say our prayers, for mother and
father to fall asleep, for the annalists, for sailors, and for 'clear the
way for Miss Isolde!' sing a lovesong to ladies' eyes, [for] here's T&I,
delightfully ours, (with lots of language of love's young dream and success
etc.), and Luke and the Law and for the lives of Lazarus (raised from the
dead so has more than one) and for old lang syne. Closing out in
sentimental fashion, in other words.

398.29-30: A kind of invocation, echoing 117.02, to T&I to pay attention to
the Ulster warnings, the Lambeg drum in all combinations.

the poem: courtship verses by each of the 4.

Ulster, gold, threats against a lout who comes courting 'thee' (Matthew's
pronoun), rough mercantile language. (characteristic bourgeois mercantile
tone)

Munster, silver, talk of how 'she' (Mark's pronoun) will come out of the
foam, dance a jig and jilt them--why should she stay with the spiritless
one, the grey barnacle gander?, romantic language and tone.

Leinster, copper, Wednesday, addressed to 'you' (Luke's pronoun), homey and
intimate, to Lizzy, on being snug (even if it says "sung"), offers to be
her nursetender for nothing--the fashionable ones died for you, but I'll
beg coppers. lower middle class snug Leinster language.

Connacht: iron, focussed on "I" (John's pronoun) who speaks vulgarly,
wildly, sexually, 'I tossed that one', complacently says she was 'mad gone'
on me, seems to report the sexual encounter as with Tristan and says she
rose up 'from under me' saying "Mick, Nick the Maggot" (i.e. ShemShaun, as
McHugh says), you're the Moses for me.

So the poem goes through options for her, a rude father's roughness
focussed on money, a more detached romantic observation of her as a
tempting Aphrodite, a bourgeois snug possible husband, a wild West Irish
lover. Through these narrators we've seen what the alliance then is, the
Tristan who becomes more than a hunk and the Isolde who stops being the
flapper and becomes a real princess.

So it's on to John, Shaun's Book III for the "lot is cast".