Shackleton and Sons, flour millers, Dublin [392.33] + "sonnur mine, Shackleton Sulten" [317.15-16] + "HCE's greatest fear is of usurpation, especially of the kind that Leopold Bloom seems to fear when he speculates thath his daughter's blonde hair may have to do with his wife's first lover, the blonde Mulvey. Sackerson is blonde, and so is Issy... 'of the golden falls' (214.31)... The implications are grave enough to figure in the dreamer's apprehension and fantasies of divorce: the four old men recall an HCE type feeling suicidal and receiving a parliamentary bill of divorce (in other words, a divorce granted on grounds of adultery) 'all on account of the smell of Shakeletin' presumably detected on his wife's person." (John Gordon: Finnegans wake: a plot summary)
alcoholic + acid + alkali = salt + water.
signs on (Anglo-Irish) - therefore, consequently, as a result + Johann Rudolph Glauber: De signatura salium... (17th century alchemical treatise on a salt used as a universal solvent) + "were we bread by the same fire and signed with the same salt," [168.08]
loaf - bread (obs. exc. dial.) + (Last Supper).
Andrew Martin (Irish) - prank, trick, shenanigan + "The youngest sister Ellen Mary (Flynn family), married Matthew Callanan, sometime secretary of the Irish Farmers Club in Upper Sackville Street, by whom she had a daughter Mary Ellen born about 1871." (from Biography by Peter Costello)
take breath - to breathe freely, to recover free breathing, as by pausing after exertion; Also fig. + MMLJ: So now pass the face for Christ' sake. Amen. Poor Matt Gregory and so. And all. Poor Martin Cunningham! (Ah God be good to us. Poor Martin Cunningham). Ay. Ay.
still and all - nevertheless, even so; after all (colloq.)
dynast - a ruler, lord, chief, potentate, esp. a hereditary ruler
konning = cunning (obs.) + koning (Dutch) - king + cunning.
Sitric Silkenbeard led the Danes to an ignominious defeat at the battle of Clontarf in 1014 + soter (gr) - savior + sulking and bored.
Burgermeister (ger) - mayor
Bart (ger) - beard + Bartholomew Vanhomrigh - Vanessa's father, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1697. According to the Dublin Annals, he "obtained from William III a royal donative, a collar of SS in lieu of that lost in 1688." The SS collar is (was?) the mayor of Dublin's chain of office.
strike oil - lit. to reach the oil (petroleum) in sinking a shaft for it through the overlying strata; hence fig. (colloq.), to hit upon a source of rapid profit and affluence.
shake hands - (said of two persons mutually saluting thus)
Hurdle Ford (name of Dublin)
Thomas Moore, song: When First I Met Thee [air: O Patrick! Fly from Me]
finnan haddie - a haddock cured with the smoke of green wood, turf, or peat earth
Noah's Ark
Mock Turtle - character in 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' + oxtail and turtle soup + Mookse/Gripes [.12]
potage (fr) - soup + caustic potash - a potassium compound often used in agriculture and industry.
Gries Suppe (ger) - semolina soup + grasshopper.
bouillon (fr) - broth + William.
boccata (it) - mouthful + bucket.
water + vuota (it) - empty + vuota (Finnish) - to leak.
buzz - a groundless fancy, whim, 'fad'; epithet of a large bushy wig
earwig's
honour - (Usually in pl.) Something conferred or done as a token of respect or distinction; a mark or manifestation of high regard; esp. a position or title of rank, a degree of nobility, a dignity.
assisting grace (notebook 1924) → term used by Saint Augustine, referring to grace which co-operates with man's good tendencies (The Catholic Encyclopedia 'Pelagius and Pelagianism': 'In the East... as an offset to widespread fatalism, the moral power and freedom of the will were... strongly insisted on, assisting grace being spoken of more frequently than preventing grace').
shim - a piece of iron attached to an agricultural implement for scraping the surface of the soil + Shem/Shaun.
Hosenband (ger) - belt, garter + husbands.
sisters (Nanny [Annie] & Eliza [Elizabeth] from Sisters and Kate [Ellen Mary] & Julia [Julia Clare] from The Dead) + "and Mat and Mar and Lu and Jo, now happily buried, our four!" [397.03]
Glastonbury - a town in Somersetshire, famed for its abbey. According to Giraldus Cambrensis it was once the Isle of Avalon; he recounts the discovery there of King Arthur's grave.
periwinkle - the English name of a gastropod mollusc of the genus Littorina, much used for food, having a dark-coloured turbinate shell + mother-of-pearl button - button made of mother-of-pearl (a smooth iridescent substance forming the inner layer of some shells).
lapper - one who laps, or takes up (liquid) with the tongue + later
anachronism - an error in computing time, or fixing dates; the erroneous reference of an event, circumstance, or custom to a wrong date; anything done or existing out of date + (notebook 1924): 'anachronists'.
deary - a little dear, a darling: a familiar term of amatory and conjugal endearment
goldpowder - gold in the form of or reduced to powder + saltpetre - potassium nitrate.
beautiful + MMLJ: And still and all they were always up thinking of the old auld man syne and up their four masters that were four up beautiful sisters and there they were always counting the lovely periwinkle buttons in the front part of their dresses & up one & up two & up five & up two four and there she was the beautiful four sisters and that was her name and they used to be getting up and were looking for her everywhere in all the fathoms when they couldn't sleep with changing beds
*S* + "After the early deaths of their husbands and the decline of their brother Patrick, the sisters (including those who were unmarried and also their aunts) moved back south of the Liffey at the beginning of 1882, leasing upper stories of an eighteenth-century house overlooking the Liffey quays at 15 Ushers Island, in the same area where the late Mr. Lyons had run his hide business. Here in the large gracious rooms, the sisters continued to advertise their music classes still under the style of the Misses Flynn. Here they gave the annual Christmastime parties for their pupils and musical friends which Joyce's parents attended and which inspired the setting of his story 'The Dead'." (From a Biography by Peter Costello)
mudhen - the moor-hen, Gallinula chloropus + maiden + Madame Blavatsky's maiden name was Hahn-Hahn.
republic (Joyce's note) → The Encyclopædia Britannica vol. XXVIII, 'Vico, Giovanni Batista', 24c: 'Patrician tyranny rouses the populace to revolt, and then democratic equality is established under a republic'.
right enough - Now usu. in weakened senses, 'indeed', 'certainly'.
alum - potassium aluminium sulphate, very astringent, used in dyeing, tawing skins, and medicine + malum (l) - apple + Adam
ovum (l) - egg + from the egg to the apples (phrase) + Eve
from under - from below
tape - a narrow woven strip of stout linen, cotton, silk, or other textile, used as a string for tying garments + tapestry.
kookaburra - native Australian name for the brown kingfisher, also known as the laughing jackass, on account of its laughing cry + (notebook 1923): 'Kookaburra bell'.
loaf - the (human) head; hence, the mind, common sense
Sean-dun (shandun) (gael) - Old fort; townland, Co. Cork + Francis Sylvester Mahony ('Father Prout'): The Bells of Shandon (song).
lousy - dirty, filthy, obscene; mean, scurvy, vile
lout - an awkward ill-mannered fellow; a bumpkin, clown
vdankauor (Armenian) - dangerous, noxious
knockknee - pl. Knees that knock together in walking from inward curvature of the legs + knockkneed - having the legs bent inwards so that the knees knock together in walking; fig. halting, feeble + Loch nEachach (lokh nakhokh) (gael) - Eachach's ("horse-rich") Lake; largest lake in Ireland: anglic. Lough Neagh.
fister - a blow with the fist + Thomas Moore, song: Let Erin Remember the Days of Old: 'On Lough Neagh's bank, as the fisherman strays, / When the clear cold eve's declining / He sees the round towers of other days / In the wave beneath him shining'.
YS (IS) - Legendary Breton city, which became a lost underwater city, like that of Atlantis or Lough Neagh, when the king's scapegrace daughter opened sluicegates in the wall protecting it from the sea + ys (Welsh) - it is.
oldster - an elderly person; an old stager [Joyce's note: 'oldster']
Transton Boastcript (Joyce's note) → Boston Evening Transcript - a former Boston newspaper.
Ohr (ger) - ear + oer- (Dutch) - primitive-, primeval- + Kussen (ger) - kisses + oorkussens (Dutch) - pillows + four kisses.
oxter - the armpit + Achsel (ger) - armpit.
puddled - rendered muddy or turbid by stirring, as water in a puddle; dirty, miry, foul; Also fig. (formerly sometimes, Muddled: confused, puzzled).
mythify - to construct a myth or myths about + mystified.
wheel - to move like a point in the circumference of a wheel; to move in a circle, spiral, or similar curve
schooler = scholar (obs.) + schooner - a small sea-going fore-and-aft rigged vessel, originally with only two masts, but now often with three or four masts and carrying one or more topsails + shooler (Irish) - vagrant, wanderer, beggar.
rusten (ger) - to arm, to equip for war + even rusten (Dutch) - to rest for a minute.
gospels + Gastspiel (ger) - performance by guest ensamble.