Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road
met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....
His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a
glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne
lived: she sold lemon platt.
O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.
He sang that song. That was his song.
O, the green wothe botheth.
When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother
put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell.
His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano
the sailor’s hornpipe for him to dance. He danced:
Tralala lala,
Tralala tralaladdy,
Tralala lala,
Tralala lala.
Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and
mother but uncle Charles was older than Dante.
Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet
back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back
was for Parnell. Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a
piece of tissue paper.
The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and
mother. They were Eileen’s father and mother. When they were grown up
he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:
—O, Stephen will apologise.
Dante said:
—O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.—
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise,
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise.
The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. All were shouting and the
prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and
chilly and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy
leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on
the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach
of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small
and weak amid the throng of the players and his eyes were weak and
watery. Rody Kickham was not like that: he would be captain of the
third line all the fellows said.
Rody Kickham was a decent fellow but Nasty Roche was a stink. Rody
Kickham had greaves in his number and a hamper in the refectory. Nasty
Roche had big hands. He called the Friday pudding dog-in-the-blanket.
And one day he had asked:
—What is your name?
Stephen had answered: Stephen Dedalus.
Then Nasty Roche had said:
—What kind of a name is that?
And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked:
—What is your father?
Stephen had answered:
—A gentleman.
Then Nasty Roche had asked:
—Is he a magistrate?
He crept about from point to point on the fringe of his line, making
little runs now and then. But his hands were bluish with cold. He kept
his hands in the side pockets of his belted grey suit. That was a belt
round his pocket. And belt was also to give a fellow a belt. One day a
fellow said to Cantwell:
—I’d give you such a belt in a second.
Cantwell had answered:
—Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a belt. I’d like to see
you. He’d give you a toe in the rump for yourself.
That was not a nice expression. His mother had told him not to speak
with the rough boys in the college. Nice mother! The first day in the
hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil
double to her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red. But he
had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice
mother but she was not so nice when she cried. And his father had given
him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money. And his father had told
him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did,
never to peach on a fellow. Then at the door of the castle the rector
had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in
the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on
it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands:
—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!
—Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye!
He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing
eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs. The fellows
were struggling and groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking
and stamping. Then Jack Lawton’s yellow boots dodged out the ball and
all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little way
and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going
home for the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change
the number pasted up inside his desk from seventyseven to seventysix.
It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold.
The sky was pale and cold but there were lights in the castle. He
wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the
haha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows. One
day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the
marks of the soldiers’ slugs in the wood of the door and had given him
a piece of shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and warm to
see the lights in the castle. It was like something in a book. Perhaps
Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were nice sentences in Doctor
Cornwell’s Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only
sentences to learn the spelling from.
Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals.
It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his
head upon his hands, and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he
had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder
him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuffbox
for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold
and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump
into the scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting for
Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the fender and her
jewelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely warm smell!
Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where the Mozambique
Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the
name of the highest mountain in the moon. Father Arnall knew more than
Dante because he was a priest but both his father and uncle Charles
said that Dante was a clever woman and a wellread woman. And when Dante
made that noise after dinner and then put up her hand to her mouth:
that was heartburn.
A voice cried far out on the playground:
—All in!
Then other voices cried from the lower and third lines:
—All in! All in!
The players closed around, flushed and muddy, and he went among them,
glad to go in. Rody Kickham held the ball by its greasy lace. A fellow
asked him to give it one last: but he walked on without even answering
the fellow. Simon Moonan told him not to because the prefect was
looking. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan and said:
—We all know why you speak. You are McGlade’s suck.
Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon Moonan that name because
Simon Moonan used to tie the prefect’s false sleeves behind his back
and the prefect used to let on to be angry. But the sound was ugly.
Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and
his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water
went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down
slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that: suck. Only
louder.
To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold
and then hot. There were two cocks that you turned and water came out:
cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could see the
names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer thing.
And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish.