James Joyce's Christmas Eve, 1904

Today is Christmas Eve, which is also the title of a little known story that James Joyce wrote in late October-November 1904, intending to include it in his collection Dubliners. This was his third short story, following 'The Sisters' and 'Eveline', both published in the Irish Homestead in 1904.

Though 'Christmas Eve' was discarded by Joyce, the manuscript was kept by his brother Stanislaus.  This facsimile was published by the textual scholar Alfred Walton Litz, in Dubliners: A Facsimile of Drafts & Manuscripts,  Garland Press, 1978. I made this photocopy of it more than forty years ago. 

This is how Alfred Walton Litz describes the story in his introduction:

'In late October 1904 he began 'Christmas Eve.' What he wrote of it has been preserved in fragmentary fair copy manuscript, but he left the story in an unfinished state and recast it as, or replaced it by, 'Hallow Eve'.'  

This dating makes the story the first thing that James Joyce wrote after leaving Dublin with Nora Barnacle. He must have begun this in Trieste, while unemployed and living out of a suitcase, before moving to Pola at the end of the month.  In his mind, he was still thinking of Dublin.

Joyce's biographers don't talk about this story. John McCourt doesn't mention 'Christmas Eve' in The Years of Bloom, but says this of Joyce's first days in Trieste:

'Despite the appalling uncertainty of these days, Joyce continued to write, with a stoic determination which would rarely leave him....He was starting his life on the continent with Nora as he intended to continue it.  His writing, no matter what the turmoil around him, would always come first.'

John McCourt, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920, Liliput Press, Dublin, 2000, p9-10.

A little of that turmoil gets into the manuscript where, at the very top, you can see the paper has been used to add up sums of money.

John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley give some background to the story:

'Clay...began life as 'Christmas Eve', in which the main characters were to include Mr Callanan, based on Joyce's uncle, William Murray, and his daughter – who bore the name Katsey both in real life and in the unfinished story. However Joyce recast the narrative, telling the tale from Maria's point of view, and using John Murray, William's brother, as the basis for the main character. This later version was originally called 'Hallow's Eve'.'

John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley, James Joyce's Dubliners: An Annotated Edition, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993.

In its style, 'Christmas Eve' fits Dubliners well, using what Hugh Kenner called the 'Uncle Charles Principle', in which the narrative idiom reflects the character's way of thinking and speaking. 

'...he had met many friends. These friends had been very friendly...'

But unlike in most other Dubliners stories, where the protagonists are usually thwarted or trapped, nothing disturbs Mr Callanan's complacency. He is only limited by his lack of imagination. 

'His mind was vacant. He had calculated all his expenses and discovered that all had been done well within the margin.'

Mr Callanan is a happily married man who drinks moderately (a daily pint in Swan's pub), whose seasonal shopping trip is a success (unlike Maria's in 'Clay') and who gets on well with his boss:

– He's not a bad sort after all if you know how to take him. But you mustn't rub him the wrong way.

That's the only part that Joyce reused when he wrote 'Clay':

'He told her all that went on in his office, repeating for her a smart answer which he had made to the manager. Maria did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had made but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing person to deal with. Joe said he wasn't so bad when you knew how to take him, that he was a decent sort so long as you didn't rub him the wrong way.'

Joyce saw 'Christmas Eve' as an unsuccessful experiment, perhaps because of the lack of conflict in the story.  He went on to write 'Counterparts', in which we meet a very different solicitor's clerk, an unhappily married alcoholic, who hates his work and can't help rubbing his boss the wrong way. Perhaps 'Christmas Eve' was recast as 'Counterparts' as well as 'Clay'?

By a twist of fate, the manuscript of 'Christmas Eve' is divided between the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale (pages 1,2 and 4) and the Cornell Joyce Collection (page 3).  Thank you Alfred Walton Litz for reuniting the pages in print!

Wouldn't it make sense for Cornell to swap their lonely page for some other document in Yale's massive Joyce collection?

A JAMES JOYCE MISCELLANY

After posting this, I learned from joyceans ⱅ woke² on Twitter that 'Christmas Eve' was published in 1962, in A James Joyce Miscellany edited by Marvin Magalaner.   It was introduced by John J Slocum, who created the Joyce collection at Yale, and Herbert Cahoon, curator of the Morgan library. They say that Joyce tried to have the story published, and provide more information on its date:

'It is possible to date ''Christmas Eve" as having been written in Trieste and Pola during the eventful months of October and November, 1904. Joyce mentions it in letters to his brother, Stanislaus, dated 31 October and 19 November, 1904, which are now in the Cornell University Library. In the second letter Joyce states, "I have written about half of 'Xmas Eve'." Ellmann gives 19 January, 1905 as the date for the completion of the story; on this day Joyce mailed it to Stanislaus in Dublin. Upon the receipt of the story, Stanislaus tried but failed to place it in The Irish Homestead which had recently published three of the stories that were part of Dubliners. He may also have tried to place it with other periodicals. 

   At this writing, a complete manuscript of "Christmas Eve" is not known to have survived nor has any portion of a manuscript of "Clay." This incomplete fair copy of "Christmas Eve" (and there may have been more of this present narrative) was probably retained by Joyce and passed into the keeping of Stanislaus, as did many of Joyce's manuscripts and books, when the Joyce family moved from Trieste to Paris in 1920.'  

You can read  A James Joyce Miscellany online here, but I've transcribed the text of the story below:

CHRISTMAS EVE 

Mr Callanan felt homely. There was a good fire burning in the grate and he knew that it was cold outside. He had been about town all day shopping with Mrs Callanan and he had met many friends. These friends had been very friendly, exchanging the compliments of the season, joking with Mrs Callanan about her number of parcels, and pinching Katsey's cheek. Some said that Katsey was like her mother but others said she was like her father — only better- looking: she was a rather pretty child. The Callanans — that is, the father and mother and Katsey and an awkward brother named Charlie — had then gone into a cake-shop and taken four cups of coffee. After that the turkey had been bought and safely tucked under Mr Callanan's arm. As they were making for their crowded tram Mr Callanan's 'boss' passed and saluted. The salute was generously returned. 

     — That's the 'boss'. He saluted — did you see? — 

     — That man? — 

     — Ah, he's not a bad sort after all if you know how to take him. But you mustn't rub him the wrong way. — 

     There was wood in the fire. Every Christmas Mr Callanan got a present of a small load of wooden blocks from a friend of his in a timber-yard near Ringsend. Christmas would not have been Christmas without a wood-fire. Two of these blocks were laid crosswise on the top of the fire and were beginning to glow. The brave light of the fire lit up a small, well-kept room with bees-waxed borders arranged cleanly round a bright square carpet. The table in the middle of the room had a shaded lamp upon it. The shade set obliquely sprayed the light of the lamp upon one of the walls, revealing a gilt-framed picture of a curly-headed child in a nightdress playing with a collie. The picture was called ''Can't you talk?" 

A print of 'Can't you talk?' by George Augustus Holmes

      Mr Callanan felt homely but he had himself a more descriptive phrase for his condition: he felt mellow. He was a blunt figure as he sat in his arm-chair; short thick legs resting together like block pipes, short thick arms hardly crossing over his chest, and a heavy red face nestling upon all. His scanty hair was deciding for grey and he looked a man who had come near his comfortable winter as he blinked his blue eyes thoughtfully at the burning blocks. His mind was vacant. He had calculated all his expenses and discovered that all had been done well within the margin. This discovery had resulted in a mood of general charity and in particular desire for some fellow-spirit to share his happiness, some of his old cronies, one of the right sort. Someone might drop in: Hooper perhaps. Hooper and he were friends from long ago and both had been many years in the same profession. Hooper was a clerk in a solicitor's office in Eustace St and Mr Callanan was a clerk in a solicitor's office close by on Wellington Quay.* They used often meet at Swan's public-house where each went every day at lunch-time to get a fourpenny snack and a pint and when they met they compared notes astutely for they were legal rivals. But still they were friends and could forget the profession for one night. Mr Callanan felt he would like to hear Hooper's gruff voice call in at the door "Hello Tom! How's the body?" The kettle was put squatting on the fire to boil for punch and soon began to puff. Mr Callanan stood up to fill his pipe and while filling it he gave a few glances at Katsey who was diligently stoning some raisins on a plate. Many people thought she would turn out a nun but there could be no harm in having her taught the typewriter; time enough after the holidays. Mr Callanan began to toss the water from tumbler to tumbler in a manner that suggested technical difficulties and just at that moment Mrs Callanan came in from the hall. 

     — Tom! here's Mr Hooper! — 

     — Bring him in! Bring him in! I wouldn't doubt you, Paddy, when there's punch going —

     — I'm sure I'm in the way . . . busy night with you, Mrs Callanan . . . — 

     — Not at all, Mr Hooper. You're as welcome as the flowers in May. How is Mrs Hooper? 

     — Ah! we can't complain. Just a touch of the old trouble, you know . . . indigestion — 

     — Nasty thing it is! She is quite strong otherwise? — 

     — O, yes, tip-top — 

     — Well, sit down, my hearty and make yourself at home — 

     — I'll try to, Tom — 

Do you think this is 'unfinished'?  This ending feels like a satisfactory resolution to me.

What might have happened in the rest of the story?

*I looked up Wellington Quay in Thom's 1904 Dublin Directory, and found that lots of solicitors had their offices there, at number 13 and 21.

The picture 'Can't you talk?' was identified by Harald Beck in Joyce Online Notes (Thanks for this to Mary Lawton on Twitter, who also commented, 'The best part of this story is how Joyce describes Callanan in the armchair and nods to Harry Clifton’s "As Welcome as the Flowers in May” or one of its other titles “The Jolly Old Mill.”)

L’Arcs en His Ceiling Flee Chinx on the Flur

How many meanings can you get out of these nine words from Finnegans Wake?

L’Arcs en His Ceiling Flee Chinx on the Flur 104.13

In July 1927, Joyce came up with this line which he added to the list of titles of 'Anna Livia's mamafesta', her letter defending her slandered husband HCE.

He was so pleased with this that, on 27 July 1927,  he sent an explanation of it to Harriet Shaw Weaver in a letter. Here he described seven different layers of meaning, perhaps for the seven colours of the rainbow (arc-en-ciel).

Selected Letters, 326

In his letter, Joyce gives the text as 'L'Arcs en' rather than the 'Arcs in' of the published version (below). The loss of the 'L' undermines three of Joyce's readings, losing the 'birds flying' in 3, the 'merriment above (larks)' in 4 and the 'birds (doves and ravens)'  in 7.  Yet it's not in Rose and O'Hanlon's restored text.

1) God's in his heaven and All's Right with the World

This is a line from Browning's verse drama, Pippa Passes, where the verse also includes a lark on the wing.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!

2) The Rainbow is in the sky (arc-en-ciel) the Chinese (Chinks) live tranquilly on the Chinese meadowplane (China alone almost of the old continent(s) has no record of a Deluge. Flur in this sense is German. It suggests also Flut (flood) and Fluss (river) and could even be used poetically for the expanse of a waterflood Flee = free)

This rainbow, 'the sky sign of soft advertisement' (4.12) is one of 122 in the book, usually linked to Noah and the flood (also in 'arc'). 

Joseph Koch, 'Noah's Offering', 1803

'And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.'

Genesis 9 12-16

I wonder where Joyce got the idea that the Chinese had no record of a deluge. The opposite is true. 

'The theme of flood control and myths of a great deluge constitute a fundamental and recurring topic in classical Chinese writing.' 

Anne Birrell, 'The Four Flood Myth Traditions of Classical China', T'uong Pau, 1997.

The earliest version of the line is a note 'Free Chinks on the Flure'. Then Joyce changed the 'free' to 'flee', creating the alliteration with 'flure' (which became ‘flur’) and also mimicking the supposed Chinese confusion pronouncing l and r. 

'Chinks' is a racist nickname for Chinese, going back to the 1880s.  

‘Flur’ also means hallway or passage in German! So that little word is packed with meanings.

3) The ceiling of his (HCE-siglum) house is in ruins for you can see the birds flying and the floor is full of cracks which you had better avoid.

This is a nice reading, which could also describe Noah's ark falling into ruins after it was stranded on Mount Ararat. So there’s an eighth interpretation! 

4) There is merriment above (larks) why should there not be high jinks below stairs?

'What larks!' (Great Expectations). From Francis Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

LARK. A boat.
LARK. A piece of merriment. People playing together jocosely.

I didn't know that a lark was a boat, though when I was young there were several excursion boats called the skylark. I wonder if Joyce knew that, since it fits with the ark theme. See the Word Detective for more about larks.

Skylark figurehead and name board in Brighton Fishing Museum

High Jinks - originally a dice game, in which the forfeit was drinking alcohol.

'below stairs' suggests the servants who in FW are called Kate and Joe.

5) The electric lamps of the gin palace are lit and the boss Roderick Rex is standing free drinks to all on the 'flure of the house'

Joyce expected Weaver to remember the very first Wake sketch he wrote, which features Roderick O'Conor, the last high king of Ireland as a Dublin publican, after closing time drinking the dregs and coming 'crash a crupper' - the first fall in Finnegans Wake. You can read it on pages 380-382 of FW.

Electric lamps are suggested by 'arcs', because of arc lamps, the first electric lighting system.

6) He is a bit gone in the upper storey, poor jink. Let him lie as he is (Shem, Ham and Japhet)

'gone in the upper storey' - one of many ways of describing crazy behaviour, like 'the rats in his garret, the bats in his belfry' (180.26).

'poor jink' - I can't find anything about this phrase online.

'let him lie as he is (Shem Ham and Japhet)' Here's another story about Noah, who made and drank the first wine, which led to him drunkenly passing out and exposing himself to his three sons. 

In the Wake, these three are another version of the three soldiers who witness HCE's sin in the park on page 34.  They are HCE's sons, Shem, Shaun and a composite third son, a fusion of the two.

Joyce identified Noah with Arthur Guinness and John Jameson on the opening page of the book, where we have another rainbow described as 'arclight':

'Rot a peek of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and Rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.' 3.13

'Noah planted the vine and was drunk

John James is the greatest Dublin distiller

Arthur Guinness " " " " brewer'

Joyce's gloss to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 15 November 1926

7) The birds (doves and ravens) (cf the jinnies is a cooin her hair and the jinnies is a ravin her hair) he saved escape from his waterhouse and leave the zooless patriark alone.

There are 43 uses of this dove/raven motif, which you can find listed in fweet. Would we find them in this line without Joyce's note?

This is another part of the Noah story in Genesis.

'the jinnies is a coin her hair...' is a quote from the Museyroom passage, on pages 8-10, where the jinnies are the two girls and also dove and raven. 

'Zooless patriark' is a great phrase. It's a shame he didn't use it in Finnegans Wake.  

We get a zookeeping Noah, with larks and the cooing of doves, in 'The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly', on page 47. But here HCE is one of the animals on show:

Begob he's the crux of the catalogue

Of our antediluvial zoo,

         (Chorus) Messrs. Billing and Coo.

          Noah's larks, good as noo. 47.3-6

Perhaps if Joyce hadn't been thinking of a seven layered rainbow he could have found even more meanings. How many more can you come up with?

This Wake line reminds me of Frank Budgen's story of the writing of 'Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.' in Ulysses:

I enquired about Ulysses. Was it progressing?
"I have been working hard on it all day," said Joyce.
"Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.
"Two sentences," said Joyce....
"You have been seeking the mot juste?" I said.
"No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. There is an order in every way appropriate. I think I have it."

He could have spent even longer working on 'L'arcs en his ceiling...' where he was not just rearranging English words but inventing new ones.

MORE SUGGESTIONS

After I posted this on social media, several Wake readers sent in suggestions.

'Fleets of arcs/ships in his head flee whirlpools on the floor'

Diego Pacheco

'I am no Wake scholar but to me it has the rhythm of the nursery rhyme "Ride a Cock Horse" - Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes - (She shall have music wherever she goes).'

Frederick J Hayn

'Ling is a a word packed with many meanings with idem spelling variations. It is, of course, a Chinese surname name with several meanings. One possible connection with flee (or free) is that it seems to be used by Chinese people outside of China, the diaspora which entails sea journeys and vessels....

  If you follow the Chinese theme then the His becomes an other God(s).
Wiki has handy info on Chinese cosmogony and deities. “The gods are energies or principles revealing, imitating and propagating the way of Heaven (Tian 天), which is the supreme godhead manifesting in the northern culmen of the starry vault of the skies and its order.”'

Paul Devine

'L'Arcs on the ceiling (with or without the "L") could indeed be electric arc lights (JJ's lamps) -- but due to their extreme brightness rather uncommon on ceilings, but used in cinema projectors, which JJ knew his way around. Flór is also an Irish word for flower (though only in imitation of the French -- Flór de lúis)'

Russell Potter

'Arcs remind me of the innards of a large ship or the ribbings of a large whale. Noah's Ark? Jonah and the Whale?'

Clint Carroll

'The phrase 'All aboard the skylark' has been around since the 19th century and 'Skylark' was, as you say, a popular name for small vessels that took holiday-makers for trips around the bay. We had one in Southend-on-Sea, and it was famously one of the small boast that took part in the Dunkirk operation.  But there's also the verb, meaning to muck about (as in 'No Skylarking on the Platform') - it's something schoolboys used to do. See attached (found in Armley Museum, Leeds)'

David Collard

‘Arc of the covenant = HCE siglum. *drops mic*’

Jonathan McCreedy

Jonathan's idea reminded me of the theory that the Ark of the Covenant was an electric capacitor, which could have powered the arc lights!

'our arc of the covenant' 507.33

James Joyce's Ashpit

How many great writers have had archaeological digs in their back gardens?  

I learned that a Joyce excavation in Fairview, Dublin, was taking place in 2013, from PQ's blog, A Building Roam. He shared a story from the Irish Times, which declared 'While it is unlikely that the excavation will yield any lost manuscripts, it is still the first such exploration of a Joyce location that has been undertaken.'

The 2014 spring edition of Archaeology Ireland (top) has Andy Halpin and Mary Cahill's report on the secrets they uncovered in the ashpit of the Joyce family house at 8 Royal Terrace (now Inverness Rd) Fairview.  

Ashpits were rectangular sunken brick or concrete lined structures, for dumping the ashes from fires and other domestic rubbish. In the 19th century, the ashes were taken away to be used as fertiliser or material for brickmaking.  In Ireland and Britain, we still call rubbish collectors 'dustmen'. 

Here's a dustman from Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor.  

We meet a dustman in Finnegans Wake: 'A dustman nocknamed Sevenchurches in the employ of Messrs Achburn, Soulpetre and Ashreborn, prairmakers, Glintalook...' 59.16

I like 'Ashreborn' - the ashes from ashpits are reborn as bricks and new life from fertiliser.

'This ourth of years is not save brickdust and being humus the same roturns.' 18.04

The Joyces lived in 8 Royal Terrace from 1900-1901, and it's the setting for the chapter of A Portrait where Stephen walks to the University.  Joyce describes the wet rubbish in the lane behind the house, where the dustmen would have made their collections;

'The lane behind the terrace was waterlogged and as he went down it slowly, choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he heard a mad nun screeching in the nuns’ madhouse beyond the wall.

—Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!

He shook the sound out of his ears by an angry toss of his head and hurried on, stumbling through the mouldering offal, his heart already bitten by an ache of loathing and bitterness.'

The nun's screeching may explain why, in Finnegans Wake, Joyce renames the street 'Royal Terrors' (420.28).

By the late Victorian period, metal dustbins (ashcans in the USA) had largely replaced sunken ashpits, and so the one in Fairview wouldn't have been regularly cleared out. The ashpit in 'An Encounter' is a place 'where nobody ever came':

'I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried along the canal bank.' 

A London dustman in 1910

In 'Araby', Joyce describes the smell of the ashpits in North Richmond Street, where the family lived in 1894-7:

'The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.'

(Thanks to Hen Hanna for sharing these Dubliners quotes, when we were discussing the ashpit excavation)

Joyce talks about the same smells in a letter to his publisher:

'It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories.'

Joyce to Grant Richards, 24 September 1905, Letters II

ASHPIT ARCHAEOLOGY

The story of the dig began in 2012, when the house owner, Stephen D'Arcy, discovered the ashpit. From the archaeologist's report: 

'Stephen, a professional gardener, was preparing this part of the garden for planting when he discovered the walls of the ash pit. At first he thought that they were the footing for a barbecue stand, but he quickly realised that he had discovered something quite different when fragments of glass with images began to emerge from the pit. At this stage, having removed some of the glass fragments (he) recognised them as magic lantern slides....'

From the Irish Times report on the dig

Stephen contacted the National Museum of Ireland, who sent in the archaeologists:

'Magic lantern slides in a suburban garden ash pit seem a long way from the usual investigations of cist burials and bog butter, but the archaeological nature of the discovery and the possible connection to important historical persons and events fit perfectly with the discipline of archaeological inquiry....The excavation of the ash pit took place over a week in February 2013, directed by Andy Halpin. Excavating an ash pit is not unlike excavating a Bronze Age cist burial, as the area to be excavated, confined by its concrete walls, is similar and the ashy deposit is also reminiscent of cremated deposits.'

Here's their photo of the excavated ashpit, which does look like a cist burial.

'charnelcysts of a weedwastewoldwevild' 613.21

'the hollow chyst excitement' 596.28

Cist burial, from Davis and Thurman's Crania Britannica, 1865

The dig revealed more than 250 complete and fragmented slides, mostly showing religious subjects. Some of them were painted, others posed photographs. Labels on the slides show they were bought from John Lizar's of Glasgow (which also had offices in Edinburgh, Liverpool and Belfast).

One of the ashpit slides, showing a scene from the Pilgrim's Progress

A John Lizar's magic lantern

In a great piece of detective work, the archaeologists suggest that the slides belonged to Thomas McBratney, a Presbyterian lay preacher who lived in the house from 1918 until his death in 1921. The slides must have been thrown away after his death, perhaps while Joyce was beginning Finnegans Wake.

THE ASHPIT BOOKS

Finding religious magic lantern slides in this ashpit is an astounding synchronicity. For this was the very ashpit, where in 1901, the Joyce family found two books.

'Somebody found at the end of the garden two books which the children nicknamed 'the ashpit books'. One was a song-book, the first pages of which were missing. It contained a large and miscellaneous collection of classical and traditional songs, popular ballads and many so-called comic songs, the humour of which always remained a mystery to me. The other was a closely and badly printed collated edition of the four gospels in a red cloth cover. The former tenants of the house were Protestants...As the little volume was still quite presentable, though the cloth of one cover was detached from the cardboard owing to exposure to weather, I put it on my shelf.'

Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, p113-114

'The splendour of the trove may have been the origin of another of John Stanislaus Joyce's sardonic catchphrases when anything was in short supply: 'Have you tried the ash-pit?'

John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello, John Stanislaus Joyce, Fourth Estate, 1997, p227

Catholic families did not have Bibles, so the book was a revelation for Stanislaus, then aged 16. After reading it from cover to cover, 'the immediate result was the uneasy prompting of doubt.'  The ashpit book discovery led Stanislaus to lose his faith. 

'My mother blamed Jim for my blunt refusal to go to confession or Communion, but she was wrong, for in point of time, at least, I refused first.'

Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, p118

THE MIDDEN

The ashpit books recall the discovery in Finnegans Wake of a letter in a 'fatal midden' by Biddy the hen.  'Midden' is an archaeological term for a mound of domestic refuse, often food remains (kitchen middens). 

'This midden is a symbol, elaborated later, for the inhabited world in which men have left so many traces. The letter stands as a symbol for all attempts at written communication including all other letters, all the world's literature, the Book of Kells, all manuscripts, all the sacred books of the world, and also Finnegans Wake itself. One reason why The Book of Kells is included here is that it was once 'stolen by night...and found after a lapse of some months, concealed under sods' (Sullivan)'

J.S.Atherton, The Books at the Wake p62-3

Like the ashpit book, the Book of Kells is also a New Testament.

Joyce may also have known that, since 1897, archaeologists were discovering vast amounts of Ancient Greek literature on papyrus scrolls from the dusty rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. 

Grenfel and Hunt's photo of their dig in Oxyrhynchus

The very first document discovered here was part of a previously unknown Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic collection of the 'hidden sayings' of Jesus.  Read a transcript here.

Oxyrhynchus 1, The Gospel of Thomas

The hen, scratching at the heap, is like one of these archaeologists. The letter she finds seems to be from an Irish American woman in Boston to her sister Maggy:

'The bird in the case was Belinda of the Dorans...and what she was scratching at the hour of klokking twelve looked for all this zogzag world like a goodish-sized sheet of letterpaper originating by transhipt from Boston (Mass.) of the last of the first to Dear whom it proceded to mention Maggy well & allathome’s health...'111.05-11

Later in the Wake, this letter is explicitly linked with the ashpit

'a letter to last a lifetime for Maggi beyond by the ashpit' 211.22

In the heat of the midden, this Boston letter has been transformed, like a melting photographic negative of a horse:

'If a negative of a horse happens to melt enough while drying, well, what you do get is, well, a positively grotesquely distorted macromass of all sorts of horsehappy values and masses of meltwhile horse....this freely is what must have occurred to our missive.... Heated residence in the heart of the orangeflavoured mudmound had partly obliterated the negative to start with, causing some features palpably nearer your pecker to be swollen up most grossly...' 111.26-36

Horse negative, from pixabey.com

This makes it astounding that archaeologists should have found magic lantern slides in the ashpit. 

A photographic slide from the ashpit

Thanks to PQ for making the connection between the slides and the melting negative in his blog, where he relates this to Robert Anton Wilson, the biggest Wake synchronicity hunter.

To sum up this web of psychogeographic synchronicities:

1897 Archaeologists in Egypt discover a Gospel of Thomas in the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus.

1901 At 8 Royal Terrace, Fairview, the Joyces find an edition of the four gospels in the ashpit.

1905 Joyce writes 'An Encounter,' in which the boy narrator hides his books 'in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came.'

Joyce writes to Grant Richards, 'It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories.'

1921 Lay preacher Thomas McBratney's religious magic lantern slides find their way into the ashpit.

1923 Joyce writes the Hen chapter of Finnegans Wake, in which a letter dug out of a midden is compared with a melting photographic negative and a New Testament, the Book of Kells. This document has 'acquired accretions of terricious matter while loitering in the past' (114.28)

2013 The ashpit is excavated and the magic lantern slides discovered.

There might be even more synchronicities if we knew about the book of comic songs.

WALKING TO FAIRVIEW

Lisa and I made a pilgrimage to Fairview in June, during the Ulysses centenary celebrations, retracing the route Stephen takes from his home to the University, in reverse.  Father Conmee, who also walks part of the same route in Ulysses, is commemorated on Newcomen Bridge.

'His morning walk across the city had begun, and he foreknew that as he passed the sloblands of Fairview he would think of the cloistral silverveined prose of Newman; that as he walked along the North Strand Road, glancing idly at the windows of the provision shops, he would recall the dark humour of Guido Cavalcanti and smile'

Standing in front of the house,  I felt I was close to one of the key locations of Finnegans Wake.

James Joyce was a Goat Lover

'Once as we were walking up the Champs Elysées together, I pointed to a beautiful white goat harnessed to a children's cart and said how much I admired these courageous and inquisitive creatures. Joyce fully agreed and stopping to contemplate the stately little animal, said he couldn't understand why the goat had been selected as a satanic symbol. 'Hircus Civis Eblanensis.' There was a good deal of the surefootedness and toughness of the mountain goat in Joyce's own composition.'  

Frank Budgen 'Further Recollections of James Joyce', Partisan Review, 1956

'We reached the zoo, and Joyce declared that he didn't care much for the animals; only cats and goats appealed to him....The goats entertained him highly with their pranks.' 

Ole Vinding, 'Joyce in Copenhagen', Portraits of the Artist in Exile 

James Joyce loved goats, which caper through the pages of his books, especially Finnegans Wake.  Goats are individualists and anarchists. Joyce identified with their independence and stubbornness.

Joyce liked goats so much that he even grew a goatee beard!

'Shem's bodily getup, included...a trio of barbels from his megageg chin.' 169.11

'Megageg' is the bleating sound made by a goat. So here Joyce is explicitly comparing his own beard with a goat's.  

 

GOATS VS SHEEP

Here's a photo of a flock of sheep and goats I saw in Alonissos,  in Greece.  The timid conformist sheep are keeping to the safe level central ground, while the bold inquisitive goats are exploring the edges.

 

Joyce preferred goats to sheep, reversing the position of Jesus Christ, in the gospel of Matthew:

'All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world....Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.'

Matthew 25 32-41

Christ saves the sheep and damns the goats

If you look up the Matthew passage online, you'll find lots of Christian writing explaining why Jesus preferred sheep to goats. They often repeat the saying 'Shepherds protect sheep from their environment, whereas goatherds protect the environment from their goats.' 

In Finnegans Wake, there are more than thirty uses of the goat/sheep motif, which you can read here in fweet.  Shem the Penman, the artist, is the goat. The conformist Shaun the Post is the sheep.

'I AM NOW HOPELESSLY WITH THE GOATS'

Here's the Exagmination, a 1929 defence of Work in Progress overseen by Joyce, who picked the title. Richard Ellmann says that 'The spelling of Exagmination was to claim its etymological derivation from ex agmine, a hint that his goats had been separated from the sheep.' 

When the Exagmination came out, Joyce wrote a letter to Valery Larbaud in which he parodied Christ's words damning the goats, applying them instead to the sheep:

'I am now hopelessly with the goats and can only think and write capriciously. Depart from me ye bleaters, into everlasting sleep which was prepared for Academicians and their agues!'

To Valery Larbaud, 30 July 1929, Letters 1, 284

The bleating sheep were the enemies of Work in Progress.  Joyce's chosen goats were the Exagmination's twelve writers (a parallel with Christ's apostles).

This goat I photographed in Ithaca tried to steal our sandwiches

'A HELL OF LECHEROUS GOATISH FIENDS'

In A Portrait, Stephen Dedalus, terrified of the hellfire sermon, temporarily joins the sheep and denies his goat nature. This vivid surreal scene is the only negative description of goats I can find in Joyce's writing:

'Creatures were in the field; one, three, six: creatures were moving in the field, hither and thither. Goatish creatures with human faces, hornybrowed, lightly bearded and grey as indiarubber. The malice of evil glittered in their hard eyes, as they moved hither and thither, trailing their long tails behind them. A rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces. One was clasping about his ribs a torn flannel waistcoat, another complained monotonously as his beard stuck in the tufted weeds....That was his hell. God had allowed him to see the hell reserved for his sins: stinking, bestial, malignant, a hell of lecherous goatish fiends.'

For the rest of his life, James Joyce identified with the goats. 

SCAPEGOATS

Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat, 1854-6

Shem is also a scapegoat, the goat sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people, described in Leviticus 16:7-22:

'And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness....And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.'

Here is Shaun describing his brother:

'my allaboy brother...whom 'tis better ne'er to name, my said brother, the skipgod expelled for looking at churches from behind'. 488.22

skipgod = scapegoat and the goat that skips being offered as a sacrifice for the Lord

R.J. Schork argues that HCE is a Mosaic scapegoat and a Roman comedy lecherous billygoat. See his wonderful 1993 article 'Sheep, Goats, and the Figura Etymologica in Finnegans Wake' which is online here. 

Sometimes Joyce uses the German term for scapegoat, 'sündenbock':

'sindbook for all the peoples' 229.32

'their sindybuck that saved a city' 412.35

When the cad first appears, he is carrying 'his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out' (35.13). 'Schuld' is guilt in German.

'THE FIRST MAN OF DUBLIN WAS A HE-GOAT'

In the Anna Livia chapter, the washerwomen describe Earwicker as a he-goat, suckling Shem and Shaun.

Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. 215.27

The Latin name means 'Goat Citizen of Eblana',  a term used by Ptolemy in his Geography, later identified by antiquarians with Dublin.  Joyce must have talked about this line with Frank Budgen, who related it to the white goat in the Champs Elysées above.

Joyce gave an extraordinary gloss on this passage to C.K.Ogden:

'The first man of Dublin was a he-goat.
Again the letters of Haveth Childers Everywhere.'

The male suckling is from an ancient Irish ritual. In his Confession, St Patrick writes of an encounter with Irish sailors: 'I refused to suck their nipples because of my reverence for God.'

A GLASS OF GOAT'S MILK

The first man of Dublin?

 

Here's a still from Percy Stow's 1909 film, A Glass of Goat's Milk, which Joyce showed at the Volta, Dublin's first cinema, in February 1910. This description is from the BFI:

'In this simple comedy a man drinks the milk of a particularly aggressive goat and grows horns. Instead off using a dissolve, director Percy Stow does it the old fashioned way, with a pair of inflatable horns, fashioned from paper, which blow up as we watch. The goat/man then proceeds to butt everything in sight before getting his horns stuck in a wooden winch where they are finally detached from his head....The actor, whoever he might be, does a splendid goat impression and the comedy builds in a satisfying way as the goat/man demolishes ever larger and more surprising objects - did they really cut down a tree specially for this film? - and there are some amusing special film effects, as when the dairyman is butted up into the air. '

I saw this, with piano accompaniment, at the National Film Theatre on Bloomsday in 1995, when it was part of a programme of films, curated by Luke McKernan, from the Volta (left). It was the only film I could imagine Joyce personally choosing for the programme.  The other films were Italian, and probably chosen by Joyce's partners from Trieste.

After reviving at his wake, Tim Finnegan told to stay lying in his coffin, is promised funerary offerings, including a glass of goat's milk:

'And we’ll be coming here, the ombre players, to rake your gravel and bringing you presents, won’t we, fenians?...and some goat’s milk, sir, like the maid used to bring you. ' 24.35

THE GOAT KING OF KILLORGLIN

My favourite goat in Finnegans Wake makes an appearance as a 'litigant' in the Festy King trial on pages 85-92. Festy King was a real name, but Joyce also plays with the word king as title, bringing in a comic group of Irish kings:

'The litigants, he said, local congsmen and donalds, kings of the arans and the dalkeys, kings of mud and tory, even the goat king of Killorglin, were egged on by their supporters' 87.24-26

There really is a Goat King of Killorglin, chosen every year at the Puck Fair in Killorglin, County Kerry. Here's a lovely film about the ceremony.

THE NANNYGOAT ON BEN HOWTH

In Ulysses, the only witness of Bloom and Molly's lovemaking on Ben Howth is a surefooted nannygoat:

'She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. '  

The goat has a speaking role in the Circe episode:

(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)

THE NANNYGOAT: (Bleats.) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!'

Ellmann has this curious footnote:

'Drinking with Weiss, Joyce remarked that he liked women to have breasts like a she-goat's. In Ulysses, Bloom looks at his wife's 'large soft bulbs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder,' and later remembers how in their first embraces on Ben Howth a nanny-goat walked by them.'

James Joyce, p 464

Old Irish Goats have now been reintroduced to Howth, by the Old Irish Goat Society, creating a perfect opportunity to reenact the big kiss scene.

LOOKING FOR OLD IRISH GOATS IN HOWTH

Lisa and I were in Dublin last week, for the big Bloomsday celebrations.   On 15 June, we had day out in Howth, where I hoped to see some of the Old Irish Goats.  

We made boat trip in the Little Flower (Ireland's smallest and oldest passenger ferry) to Ireland's Eye

We saw loads of guillemots

Back on Howth Head, it was a perfect weather for goat spotting

The view south to Dalkey Island (which also has wild goats)

Here's the Bailey Lighthouse

We saw two llamas

But there was no sign of any goats!

After our day out, I learned on twitter that the Old Irish Goat Society had staged their own photo renactment with a magnificent goat. On Instagram, they posted film of of the shoot with this description:

'When Joycean Clare Taylor, approached us about a photoshoot with the goats to mark the centenary of Ulysses, we were a little nervous truth be told! Goats do their own thing it’s a known fact, & ours have a significant horned-presence, which made us question if it would be safe. What we didn’t expect was a day full of laughter & unforgettable moments, like when our handsome goat decided to remove Leopold’s pocket-square in the middle of a shot.'

picture and report from Irishcentral.com

When I mentioned my own failure to find a goat, they tweeted a kind invitation to give me a private tour. 

Unfortunately, we'd already gone south to Bray by this time.

I did find a sheep in Dublin, at F.X.Buckley's (Wakean name!) butcher shop in Talbot Street.

But the only goat I saw was this one on the wall of Sheridans the cheesemongers...