"Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room." (The Dead) → Miss Kate and Miss Julia are based on Joyce's own aunts: The Misses Flynn who, as their great-nephew put it, 'trilled and warbled in a Dublin church up to the age of seventy'. This was the ancient Franciscan church on the south quays popularly known as Adam and Eve's (Peter Costello: A Biography).
swerve - an act of swerving, turning aside, or deviating from a course + swerve of shore ... bend of bay - curving shoreline of Dublin Bay, seen from two different points of view: that of the native on the shore and that of the foreign invader (or returning exile) at sea.
bend - curve
bay - a body of water partially enclosed by land but with a wide mouth, affording access to the sea.
commodious - comfortable, spacious, capacious
vicious circle - situation in which a cause produces a result that itself produces the original cause + vicus (l) - village, hamlet; street, row of houses, quarter of a city + Giambattista Vico.
recirculation - a renewed or fresh circulation
environs - surroundings, outskirts
FDV: brings us to Howth Castle & Environs! Sir Tristram, viola d'amores, had not encore arrived passencore rearrived on a merry isthmus from North Armorica to wielder fight his peninsular war, nor stones sham rocks by the Oconee exaggerated theirselves in exaggerated themselse to Laurens county, Ga, doubling all the time, nor a voice redffire from afire answered bellowsed mishe mishe chishe to tufftuff thouartpatrick thouartpeatrick.
Tristram - Tristan of Lyonnesse (hero of medieval romance, nephew of Mark of Cornwall, lover of Isolde of Ireland) + Sir Tristrem - metrical romance by Thomas the Rhymer from 13. c. + Sir Amory Tristram, one of Ireland's Norman conquerors, founder of the St Lawrence family of Howth → Joyce: "Sir Amory Tristram 1st earl of Howth changed his name to Saint Lawrence, in Brittany (North Armorica)".
violer - a player of the viol, in early use esp. one attached to the household of the king, a noble, etc. + viola d'amore - a sweet-toned tenor viol (Italian, literally 'viol of love') + 'viola in all moods and senses' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
d'amore (it) - of love + d'amores (Portuguese) - of loves.
A long sea implies an uniform and steady motion of long and extensive waves; on the contrary, a short sea is when they run irregularly, broken, and interrupted, so as frequently to burst over a vessel's side or quarter + Short Sea (Nautical) - Irish Sea.
pas encore (fr) - not yet + passe encore (fr) - Said of something passable or tolerable + cor (l) - heart + 'passencore = pas encore and ricorsi storici of Vico' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
rearrive - to arrive again
Armorica - name of the north-western part of Gaul, now called Bretagne or Brittany.
scraggy - rough, irregular or broken in outline or contour + scrag (Slang) - neck.
isthmus - a narrow portion of land, enclosed on each side by water, and connecting two larger bodies of land; a neck of land + isthmos (gr) - neck + 'Isthmus of Sutton a peck of land between Howth head and the plain' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
minor - small
wielder - a ruler, governer; one who uses or acts skilfully + wieder (ger) - again + wiel (Dutch) - wheel + 'wielderfight = wiederfechten = refight' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
'Arthur Wellesley (of Dublin) fought in the Peninsular war' & 'Tristan et Iseult, passim' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver) + In August 1808, British forces landed in Portugal under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington... Wellesley returned to Portugal in April 1809 to command the Anglo–Portuguese forces.
top sawyer - a worker at a sawpit who stands above the timber; one who holds a superior position, a first-rate hand at something + Topsawyer's Rock - a rock formation on the Oconee river in Georgia, United States + Tom Soyer
rocks (Slang) - testicles
Oconee - river in Georgia + ochone - exclamation of regret or grief.
exaggerate - to heap up
gorgio - designation given by gipsies to one who is not a gipsy (from Gipsy gorgio: a Gentile, a person who is not a Gypsy, one who lives in a house and not in a tent) + (notebook 1922-23): 'gorgios (Gentiles)' + Giorgio Joyce (1905-1976) - James Joyce's son + REFERENCE
Dublin, Georgia - Town, Laurens County, Georgia, US, on Oconee River. Joyce explained to Harriet Weaver that it was founded by a Dubliner named Peter Sawyer (actually it was Jonathan Sawyer), and that its motto was "Doubling all the time."
mumper - beggar, a begging impositor, one that sulks; halfbred gipsy (slang) + (notebook 1922-23): 'mumper roadfolk who shelter' → Daily Mail 28 Dec 1922, 6/5: 'Gipsies in Winter': 'the Romanichal, the true-bred gipsy, scorns the "mumpers" or road-folk who seek cover at night under house-roof' + number.
afire - flaming, on fire + a fire
bellows - to blow (with bellows) + bellow - to call, yell + 'bellowed = the response of the peatfire of faith to the windy words of the apostle' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
'Mishe = I am (Irish) i.e. Christian' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver)] + mische (ger) - mix + Moshe (Hebrew) - Moses + Exodus 3:2: 'the bush burned with fire... God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.'
mish (Serbian) - mouse + Maurice [mouse] Behan [Typhon] (man servant), slaying a dragon [*S*] ("Over mantelpiece picture of Michael, lance, slaying Satan, dragon with smoke.") + Typhon = Black Dragon [Black Snake], constellation Great Bear; Draco = Red Dragon [Red Snake], constellation Orion.
'Tauf = baptize (German)' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver) + Paul.
In Greek petros, "Peter", is a masculine form of petra, which means "rock"; Jesus says: "Thou art Peter (petros), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church → 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock etc (a pun in the original Aramaic)' & 'Lat: Tu es Petrus et super hane petram' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
FDV: Not yet though venisoon after had a kidson kidscadet buttended an a bland old isaac not yet & all's fair in vanessy, had twin were sosie sesthers played siege to wroth with twone Jonathan jonathan. Not Rot a peck of pa's malt had Shem and Son Hem or Sen Jhem or Sen brewed by arclight & bad luck worse end bloody end rory end to the regginbrew regginbrow was to be seen on ringsun ringsome the waterface.
venison - any beast of chase or other wild animal killed by hunting + very soon
scad - a dollar + hit squad - a group of esp. politically-motivated assassins or kidnappers.
buttend - to use the butt end (e.g. of a gun) + butt (Colloquial) - buttock + 'Parnell ousted Isaac Butt from leadership' & 'The venison purveyor Jacob got the blessing meant for Esau' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
bland - suave, dull, uninteresting + blind
Isaac - Isaac ben Abraham (known as Isaac the blind) + REFERENCE
sosie - double, twin esp. an identical twin + sosie (fr) - twin + Macbeth was seduced by 'three weird sisters' + Inverness - Macbeth's castle + William Shakespeare: Macbeth I.1.11: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair'.
wroth - to manifest anger, to become angry + Roth, Samuel - piratically published some of "Work in Progress" in Two Worlds (New York, 1925-26), and in 1926-27 published more than half of Ulysses.
twenty nine + (two-one) Jonathan Swift, "nathandjoe," and his amours with two girls, Esther Johnson (Stella) and Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa) + nat (Dutch) - wet.
rot - to decompose + rota (l) - wheel + not
peck - a liquid measure of two gallons; a considerable quantity or number, a 'quantity'.
Jim + Shem.
Shaun + John + shen (Hebrew) - tooth.
malt - barley or other grain prepared for brewing or distilling + Willy Shakespeare brewed a peck of malt during a famine (song O, Willie brew'd a peck o' malt).
brew - to concoct, to convert (barley, malt, or other substance) into a fermented liquor.
arclight = arclamp - a lamp in which the light is produced by an electric arc.
rory - dewy, gaudy in colour + Rory - Joyce glosses the word (Letters, I, 248) thus: "rory = Irish = red"/ "rory = Latin, roridus = dewy"/ "At the rainbow's end are dew and the colour red: bloody end to the lie in Anglo-Irish = no lie." In FW, "rainbow" has the Biblical meaning of peace, covenant between God and man; "dew" is its opposite, a promise of continued war, because Vico says that, after the flood, the climate was dry and it did not thunder till after "dew" appeared (Glasheen, Adaline / Third census of Finnegans wake).
regina (l) - a queen + Regen (ger) - rain + rainbow + bloody end to the lie (Anglo-Irish) - no lie.
ringsum (ger) - all around + 'ringsome = German ringsum, around' (Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver).
aqua (l) - water + Genesis 1:2: 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters'.
FDV: The story tale of the fall is retailed early in bed and later in life throughout most christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the wall at once entailed at such short notice the fall of Finnigan, the solid man and that the humpty hill hillhead himself promptly prumptly sends an inquiring unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes. Two facts have come down to us Their resting The upturnpikepoint for place is at the knock out in the park where there have always been oranges on laid on the green always & ever ever & evermore since the Devlin Devlins first loved liffey livy.
gaireachtach (garokhtokh) (gael) - boisterous
Joyce asked
me "Aren't there 4 terrible things in Japan, "Kaminari" being
one of them?" I counted for him:
brontę (gr) - thunder
Donner (ger) - thunder
trovăo (Portuguese) - thunder
Varuna - Hindu creator and storm god
scan (scan) (gael) - crack + ĺska (Swedish) - thunder
torden (Danish) - thunder
tornach (tornokh) (gael) - thunder
Wallstreet - New York stock exchange + strait - difficulty, crisis
Parr, Thomas, "Old Parr" (1483-1635) - lived in the reigns of ten princes, got a girl with child when over a hundred + parr - a young salmon before it becomes a smolt
retell - to tell again + re - - 'again, 'anew' + tale - to discourse, talk, gossip.
minstrelsy - the singing and playing of a minstrel + Christy Minstrels - black face troop which came from America to London in 1857. Moore and Burgess were their rivals + proverb Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
'Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall' + oeuf (French) - egg.
entail - to bring on by way of necessary consequence
at short notice - with little time for action or preparation
pfui - an exclamation of contempt or disgust + chute (fr) - fall.
Erse - Irish + Erseman - a man who is Erse by birth or descent.
'The Solid Man' - W.J. Ashcroft, American-Irish Dublin music hall performer (because of his famous rendering of song Muldoon the Solid Man).
humpty - humped, hump-backed + Humpty Dumpty - A short, dumpy, hump-shouldered person. In the well-known nursery rime or riddle commonly explained as signifying an egg (in reference to its shape); thence allusively used of persons or things which when once overthrown or shattered cannot be restored. (In the nursery rime or riddle there are numerous variations of the last two lines, e.g. 'Not all the king's horses and all the king's men Could [can] set [put] Humpty Dumpty up again [in his place again, together again]'.)
promptly + ...bed is almost entirely obscure to the formerly solid ("erst solid"), once upright ("once wallstrait") Irishman ("erse... man") who is laid to rest in it ("laid to rust") and who, no longer either solid or upright, seems to have sustained very serious fall ("The Fall," "the great fall," "the pftjschute [Fr. chute, "fall"]). Perhaps only a minute ago our rubbled hero could have identified his head and feet with as much proud precision as any wakeful rationalist, and in several languages too. Now he hasn't vaguest awareness of their location, of their relation either to each other or to himself, or quite fully of their existence; the paragraph resolves as a muddily blurred "humptyhihllhead" sends sensory inquiries outward in space in quest of the toes to which it is presumably attached. (John Bishop: Joyce's Book of the Dark).
inquiring - that inquires, inquisitive
Weston, Jessie - her book From Ritual to Romance is a principal source of Eliot's The Waste Land. FW straightforwardly associates her with the Grail Quest (Glasheen, Adaline / Third census of Finnegans wake)
quest - search
turnpike - a barrier placed across a road to stop passage till the toll is paid; a toll-gate + to turn up one's toes - to die + pike - a sharp point, pointed tip, peak + TURNPIKE - The Dublin turnpike system was introduced in the reign of George II. An 1821 map shows 10 Dublin turnpikes, almost all located on the North Circular Road and South Cicrcular Road at the crossing of main roads. The turnpike in Chapelizod was just East of the Phoenix Tavern (where the Mullingar House now stands) at the curve of the Dublin road to the bridge. It is described on the 1st page of Le Fanu's House by the Churchyard. The Dublin-Mullingar road was a turnpike road until 1853.
palec (Pan-Slavonic) - toe
cnoc (knuk) (gael) - hill + knock out - a knock-out blow.
The Basque word for orange (laranja) is possibly folk-etymologised as 'the fruit that was first eaten' (i.e. by Adam and Eve) + orange (Slang) - vulva.
rust - decompose + to lay to rest - to put in the last resting-place, to bury + rust (Dutch) - rest.