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| Renoir's washerwomen, c1888 |
Unlike other dialogues in the book, like Mutt and Jute on page 16 or Butt and Taff on page 338, the episode is not set out as dialogue. The words of the washerwomen are not distinguished from each other on the page.
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| Crosby Gage edition, 1928 |
Joyce told an old school friend, Sarsfield Kerrigan, that the episode was "an attempt to subordinate words to the rhythm of water.'' He said to another friend, Constantine Curran that, "when he had finished the Anna Livia episode his heart was filled with misgivings. He went down that evening to the Seine and listened near one of its bridges to its waters...He came back, he said, content."
He also told his Czech translator, Adolf Hoffmeister, that the book was "not written in English or French or Czech or Irish. Anna Livia does not speak any of these languages, she speaks the speech of a river. It is the river Liffey. That is a woman, it is Anna Liffey. She is not quite a river, nor wholly a woman. She could be a goddess or a washerwoman, she is abstract."
So he wanted the episode to look and sound like a river, whose flow would be broken up if the words were set as dialogue.
Joyce wrote to Curran that ''The piece should be read half aloud, without a break and rather rapidly." That's how Joyce reads the ending in his own recording, without distinguishing between the two voices.
The challenge for the reader is to decide who is saying what.
The two washerwomen have very different personalities and voices and, until the end, it's usually clear which one is speaking. The first speaker has a young voice. She is enthusiastic, energetic and excitable, urging the story on:
'Describe her! Hustle along, why can't you? Spitz on the iern while it's hot. I wouldn't miss her for irthing on nerthe. Not for the lucre of lomba strait! Oceans of Gaud, I mosel hear that! Ogowe presta!'
The second speaker, who is providing the gossip, is old, bitter and often complains about her physical ailments and the disgusting work she has to do as a washerwoman.
The two washerwomen make one other appearance, as banshees at the end of the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes, on pages 158-9. They gather up the Mookse and Gripes, who have been transformed into washing, leaving 'now only an elm tree and but a stone' (159.05).
In Irish myth, banshees often appear as washerwomen, washing bloody clothes at night at the ford of a river, as an omen of death.
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| Yan'Dargent, Les Lavandières de la nuit, c1861 |
We later learn, in Anna Livia's final monologue, that the washerwomen have names:
Mrs Quickenough must be the older washerwoman, who calls herself a widow, so she is the one who turns into a tree at the end of the episode. Miss Dodpebble turns into the stone.
'As Tree is Quick and Stone is White So Is My Washing Done at Night' (106.36) is one of the titles of Anna Livia's letter.
The tree stands for time and organic nature, the stone for space and inorganic nature. Mrs Quickenough also stands for the left bank of the river, since she is linked with the artist, Shem, while Miss Dodpebble, associated with Shaun ('all's right with every feature' 187.25), is the right bank.
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| From Ireland Magazine June 1982 |
As banks of the river, the women also move alongside its course. At the beginning they're at its source, in the Wicklow Mountains, where the Liffey is only a stream, and they are so close to each other that they can bang their heads together ('And don't butt me –hike!–when you bend.' 196.09)
Here's a film of the source, from Solid Ether.
By the end the river has grown so wide that the women can no longer hear each other speaking over the bawk of bats and the noise of the 'chittering waters'. See Joyce's notes on the ending given to C.K.Ogden.
If Joyce had made a schema for the episode, it might look like this.
Until the end, we can usually tell who is speaking, though a few passages are obscure. I have no idea what's going on here:
'Wish a wish! Why a why? Mavro! Letty Lerck's lafing light throw those laurals now on her daphdaph teasesong petrock. Maass! But the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes.'
The final pages are the hardest to divide. One clue is given by references to time and space:
This must spoken by Miss Dodpebble, who represents space. She has a chart while Mrs Quickenough, who is time, has a watch. Joyce wrote a note on this passage:
'The stone is a sign of space, and the tree, which has growth, of time. The same idea is at the back of what comes after.....The 'Milky Way'. Stars in the sky give the idea of space.':
'Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are taking root. And my cold cher's gone ashley. Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It saon is late.'
Here Mrs Quickenough has to say 'My branches lofty are taking root' and Mrs Dodpebble must say 'And my cold cher's gone ashley', but the other lines could be spoken by either of them.
Here's what I've come up with so far, with the tree’s words in green.
ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE SET OUT AS DIALOGUE
Miss Dodpebble:
O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, you know Anna Livia?
Miss Dodpebble:
Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now.
Mrs Quickenough:
You'll die when you hear. Well, you know, when the old cheb went futt and did what you know.
Miss Dodpebble:
Yes, I know, go on. Wash away and quit dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes. And don't butt me — hike! — when you bend.
Mrs Quickenough:
Or whatever it was they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish Park. He's an awful old reppe. Look at the shirt of him! Look at the dirt of it! He has all my water black on me. And it steeping and stuping since this time last wik. How many goes is it I wonder I washed it? I know by heart the places he likes to saale, duddurty devil! Scorching my hand and starving my famine to make his private linen public.
Miss Dodpebble:
Wallop it well with your battle and clean it.
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| Washerwomen with washing bats (battledores), by Jean-Francois Millet |
Mrs Quickenough:
My wrists are rwusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it!
Miss Dodpebble:
What was it he did a tail at all on Animal Sendai? And how long was he under loch and neagh?
Mrs Quickenough:
It was put in the newses what he did, nicies and priers, the King fierceas Humphrey, with illysus distilling, exploits and all. But toms will till. I know he well. Temp untamed will hist for no man. As you spring so shall you neap. O, the roughty old rappe! Minxing marrage and making loof. Reeve Gootch was right and Reeve Drughad was sinistrous. And the cut of him! And the strut of him! How he used to hold his head as high as a howeth, the famous eld duke alien, with a hump of grandeur on him like a walking wiesel rat! And his derry's own drawl and his corksown blather and his doubling stutter and his gullaway swank. Ask Lictor Hackett or Lector Reade or Garda Growley or the Boy with the Billyclub.
Miss Dodpebble:
How elster is he a called at all?
Mrs Quickenough:
Qu'appelle? Huges Caput Earlyfouler.
Miss Dodpebble:
Or where was he born or how was he found? Urgothland, Tvistown on the Kattekat? New Hunshire, Concord on the Merrimake? Who blocksmitt her saft anvil or yelled lep to her pail? Was her banns never loosened in Adam and Eve's or were him and her but captain spliced? For mine etherduck I thee drake. And by my wildgaze I thee gander. Flowey and Mount on the brink of time makes wishes and fears for a happy isthmass. She can show all her lines, with love, licence to play. And if they don't remarry that hook and eye may.
Mrs Quickenough:
O, passmore that and oxus another! Don Dom Dombdomb and his wee follyo!
Miss Dodpebble:
Was his help inshored in the Stork and Pelican against bungelars, flu and third risk parties? I heard he dug good tin with his doll, delvan first and duvlin after, when he raped her home, Sabrine asthore, in a perokeet's cage, by dredgerous lands and devious delts, playing catched and mythed with the gleam of her shadda (if a flic had been there to pop up and pepper him!), past auld min's manse and Maisons Allfou and the rest of incurables and the last of immurables, the quaggy waag for stumbling.
Mrs Quickenough:
Who sold you that jackalantern's tale? Pemmican's pasty pie! Not a grasshoop to ring her, not an antsgrain of ore. In a gabbard he barqued it, the boat of life, from the harbourless Ivernikan Okean, till he spied the loom of his landfall and he loosed two croakers from under his tilt, the gran Phenician rover. By the smell of her kelp they made the pigeonhouse.
Miss Dodpebble:
Like fun they did! But where was Himself, the timoneer?
Mrs Quickenough:
That marchantman he suivied their scutties right over the wash, his cameleer's burnous breezing up on him, till with his runagate bowmpriss he roade and borst her bar.
Miss Dodpebble:
Pilcomayo! Suchcaughtawan! And the whale's away with the grayling!
Mrs Quickenough:
Tune your pipes and fall ahumming, you born ijypt, and you're nothing short of one!
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, ptellomy soon and curb your escumo.
Mrs Quickenough:
When they saw him shoot swift up her sheba sheath, like any gay lord salomon, her bulls they were ruhring, surfed with spree. Boyarka buah! Boyana bueh! He erned his lille Bunbath hard, our staly brede, the trader.
Miss Dodpebble:
He did. Look at here. In this wet of his prow. Didn't you know he was kalled a bairn of the brine, Wasserbourne the waterbaby?
Mrs Quickenough:
Havemmarea, so he was. H.C.E. has a codfisck ee. Shur, she's nearly as badher as him herself.
Miss Dodpebble:
Who? Anna Livia?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, Anna Livia! Do you know she was calling bakvandets sals from all around, nyumba noo, chamba choo, to go in till him, her erring cheef, and tickle the pontiff aisy-oisy?
Miss Dodpebble:
She was? Gota pot! Yssel that the limmat!
Mrs Quickenough:
As El Negro winced when he wonced in La Plate.
Miss Dodpebble:
O, tell me all I want to hear, how loft she was lift a laddery dextro!
Mrs Quickenough:
A coneywink after the bunting fell. Letting on she didn't care, sina feza, me absantee, him man in passession, the proxenete!
Miss Dodpebble:
Proxenete and phwhat is phthat? Emme for your reussischer's Honddu jarkon! Tell us in franca langua. And call a spate a spate.
Mrs Quickenough:
Did they never sharee you ebro at skol, you antiabecedarian? It's just the same as if I was to go par examplum now in conservancy's cause out of telekinesis and proxenete you.
Miss Dodpebble:
For Coxyt sake and is that what she is? Botlettle I thought she'd act that loa.
Mrs Quickenough:
Didn't you spot her in her windaug, wubbling up on an osiery chair, with a meusic before her all cunniform letters, pretending to ribble a reedy derg on a fiddle she bogans without a band on? Sure she can't fiddan a dee, with bow or abandon! Srue, she can't!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tista suck. Well, I never now heard the like of that! Tell me moher. Tell me moatst.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, old Humber was as glommen as grampus, with the tares at his thor and the buboes for ages and neither bowman nor shot abroad and bales allbrant on the crests of rockies and nera lamp in kitchen or church and giant's holes in Grafton's causeway and deathcap mushrooms round Funglus' grave and the great tribune's barrow all darnels ocummule, sittang sambre on his sett, drammen and drommen, usking queasy quizzers of his ruful continence, his childlinen scarf to encourage his obsequies, where he'd check their debths in that mormon's thames, be questing and handsel, hop, step and a deepend, with his berths in their toiling moil, his swallower open from swolf to fore and the snipes of the gutter pecking his crocs, hungerstriking all alone and holding doomsdag over hunselv, dreeing his weird with his dander up and his fringe combed over his eygs and droming on loft till the sight of the sternes after zwarthy kowse and weedy broeks and the tits of buddy and the loits of pest and to peer was Parish worth thette mess. You'd think all was dodo belonging to him, how he durmed adranse in durance vaal. He had been belching for severn years. And there she was, Anna Livia, she darent catch a winkle of sleep, purling around like a chit of a child, Wendawanda, a fingerthick, in a Lapsummer skirt and damazon cheeks for to ishim bonzour to her dear dubber Dan. With neuphraties and sault from his maggias. And an odd time she'd cook him up blooms of fisk and lay to his heartsfoot her meddery eygs, yayis, and staynish beacons on toasc and a cupenhave so weeshwaashy of greenland's tay or a dzoupgan of mokau kaffue au sable or Sinkiang sukry or his ale of ferns in trueartpewter and a shinkobread (hamjambo, bana?) for to plaise that man hog stay his stomicker till her pyrraknees shrunk to nutmeg graters while her togglejoints shuck with goyt, and as rash as she'd russ with her peakload of vivers up on her sieve (metauwero rage it swales and rieses!) my hardey Hek he'd kast them frome him with a stour of scorn as much as to say you sow and you sozh, and if he didn't peg the platteau on her tawe, believe you me, she was safe enough. And then she'd esk to vistule a hymn, The Heart Bowed Down or The Rakes of Mallow or Chelli Michele's La Calumnia è un Vermicelli or a balfy bit or Old Jo Robidson. Sucho fuffing a fifeing 'twould cut you in two! She'd bate the hen that crowed on the turrace of Babbel. What harm if she knew how to cockle her mouth! And not a mag out of Hum no more than out of the mangle weight.
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that a faith?
Mrs Quickenough:
That's the fact. Then riding the ricka and roya romanche, Annona, gebroren aroostokrat Nivia, dochther of Sense and Art, with Sparks' pirryphlickathims funkling her fan anner frostivying tresses dasht with virevlies — while the prom beauties sreeked nith their bearers' skins! — in a period gown of changeable jade that would robe the wood of two cardinals' chairs and crush poor Cullen and smother MacCabe.
Miss Dodpebble:
O blazerskate! Theirs porpor patches!
Mrs Quickenough:
Mrs Quickenough:
Phoebe, dearest, tell, O tell me and I loved you better nor you knew. And letting on hoon var daft about the old warbly sangs from over holmen, High hellskirt saw ladies hensmoker lilyhung pigger, and soay and soan and so firth and so forth in a tone sonora, and Oom Bothar below like Bheri-Bheri in his sandy cloak, so umvolosy, as deaf as a yawn, the stult!
Miss Dodpebble:
Go away! Poor deef old deery! Yare only teesing! Anna Liv?
Mrs Quickenough:
As Chalk is my judge! And didn't she up in sorgue and go and trot doon and stand in her douro, puffing her old dudheen, and every shirvant siligiril or wensum farmerette walking the pilend roads, Sowy, Fundally, Daery or Maery, Milucre, Awny or Graw, usedn't she make her a simp or a sign to slip inside by the sullyport?
Miss Dodpebble:
You don't say the sillypost?
Mrs Quickenough:
Bedouix but I do! Calling them in one by one (To Blockbeddum here! Here the Shoebenacaddie!) and legging a jig or so on the sihl to show them how to shake their benders and the dainty how to bring to mind the gladdest garments out of sight and all the way of a maid with a man and making a sort of a cackling noise like two and a penny or half a crown and holding up a silliver shiner.
Miss Dodpebble:
Alesse, the lagos of girly days! For the dove of the dunas! Wasut? Izod? Are you sarthe an suir? Not where the Finn fits into the Mourne, not where the Nore takes lieve of Bloem, not where the Braye divarts the Farer, not where the Moy changez her minds twixt Cullin and Conn and tween Cunn and Collin? Or where Neptune sculled and Tritonville rowed and leandros three bumped heroines two?
Mrs Quickenough:
Neya, narev, nen, nonni, nos!
Miss Dodpebble:
Then whereabouts in Ow and Ovoca? Was it ystwith wyst or Lucan Yokan or where the hand of man has never set foot? Dell me where, the fairy ferse time!
Mrs Quickenough:
I will if you listen. You know the dinkel dale of Luggelaw? Well, there once dwelt a local heremite, Michael Arklow was his riverend name (with many a sigh I aspersed his lavabibs!), and one venersderg in junojuly, oso sweet and so cool and so limber she looked, Nance the Nixie, Nanon L'Escaut, in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling, he plunged both of his newly anointed hands to the core of his cushlas in her singimari saffron strumans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it, that was deepdark and ample like this red bog at sundown. By that Vale Vowclose's lucydlac, the reignbeau's heavenarches arronged orranged her. Afrothdizzying galbs, her enamelled eyes indergoading him on to the vierge violetian.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, after it was put in the Mericy Cordial Mendicants' Sitterdag-Zindeh-Munaday Wakeschrift (for once they sullied their white kid gloves, chewing cuds of their dinner of cheekin and beggin, with their show us it here and their mind out of that and their when you're quite finished with the reading matarial) even the snee that snowdon his hoaring hair had a skunner against him. Thaw, thaw, sava, savuto! Score Her Chuff Exsquire! Everywhere erriff you went and every bung you arver dropped into in cit or suburb or in addled areas, the Rose and Bottle or Phoenix Tavern or Power's Inn or Jude's Hotel, or wherever you scoured the countryside from Nannywater to Vartryville or from Porta Lateen to the lootin quarter you found his ikom etsched tipside down or the cornerboys cammocking his guy and Morris the Man, with the role of a royss in his turgos the turrible (Evropeahahn cheic house, unskimmed sooit and yahoort, hamman now cheekmee, Ahdahm this way make, Fatima, half turn!), reeling and railing around the local as the peihos piped and ubanjees twanged, with oddfellow's triple tiara busby rotundarinking round his scalp. Like Pate-by-the-Neva or Pete-over-Meer. This is the Hausman all paven and stoned, that cribbed the Cabin that never was owned, that cocked his leg and hennad his Egg. And the mauldrin rabble around him in areopage, fracassing a great bingkang cagnan with their timpan crowders. Mind your Grimmfather! Think of your Ma! Hing the Hong is his jove's hangnomen! Lilt a bolero, bulling a law! She swore on croststyx nyne wyndabouts she'd be level with all the snags of them yet. Par the Vulnerable Virgin's Mary del Dame! So she said to herself she'd frame a plan to fake a shine, the mischiefmaker, the like of it you niever heard.
Miss Dodpebble:
What plan? Tell me quick and dongu so crould! What the meurther did she mague?
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, she bergened a zak, a shammy mailsack, with the lend of a loan of the light of his lampion, off one of her swapsons, Shaun the Post, and then she went and consulted her chapboucqs, old Mot Moore, Casey's Euclid and the Fashion Display, and made herself tidal to join in the mascarete. O gig goggle of gigguels, I can't tell you how! It's too screaming to rizo, rabbit it all! Minneha, minnehi, minnehe, minneho!
Miss Dodpebble:
O, but you must, you must really! Make my hear it gurgle gurgle, like the farest gargle gargle, in the dusky dirgle dargle. By the twittering well of Mulhuddart I swear I'd pledge my chanza getting to heaven through Tirry and Killy's mount of impiety to hear it all, aviary word.
Mrs Quickenough:
O, leave me my faculties, woman, a while! If you don't like my story get out of the punt.
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, have it your own way so.
Mrs Quickenough:
Here, sit down and do as you're bid. Take my stroke and bend to your bow. Forward in and pull your overthepoise! Lisp it slaney and crisp it quiet. Deel me longsome. Tongue your time now. Breathe thet deep. Thouat's the fairway. Hurry slow and scheldt you go.
Miss Dodpebble:
Lynd us your blessed ashes here till I scrub the canon's underpants.
Mrs Quickenough:
Flow now. Ower more. And pooleypooley. First she let her hair fal and down it flussed to her feet its teviots winding coils. Then, mothernaked, she sampood herself with galawater and fraguant pistania mud, wupper and lauar, from crown to sole. Next she greased the groove of her keel, warthes and wears and mole and itcher, with antifouling butterscatch and turfentide and serpenthyme, and with leafmould she ushered round prunella isles and eslats dun, quincecunct, allover her little mary. Peeld gold of waxwork her jellybelly and her grains of incense anguille bronze. And after that she wove a garland for her hair. She pleated it. She plaited it. Of meadowgrass and riverflags, the bulrush and waterweed, and of fallen griefs of weeping willow. Then she made her bracelets and her anklets and her armlets and a jetty amulet for necklace of clicking cobbles and pattering pebbles and rumbledown rubble, richmond and rehr, of Irish rhunerhinestones and shellmarble bangles. That done, a dawk of smut to her airy eye, Annushka Lutetiavitch Pufflovah, and the lellipos cream to her lippeleens and the pick of the paintbox for her pommettes, from strawbirry reds to extray violates, and she sendred her boudeloire maids to His Affluence, Ciliegia Grande and Kirschie Real, the two chirrines, with respecks from his missus, seepy and sewery, and a request might she passe of him for a minnikin. A call to pay and light a taper, in Brie-on-Arrosa, back in a sprizzling. The cock striking mine, the stalls bridely sign, there's Zambosy waiting for me. She said she wouldn't be half her length away. Then, then, as soon as the lump his back was turned, with her mealiebag slang over her shulder, Anna Livia, oysterface, forth of her bassein came.
Miss Dodpebble:
Describe her! Hustle along, why can't you? Spitz on the iern while it's hot. I wouldn't miss her for irthing on nerthe. Not for the lucre of lomba strait! Oceans of Gaud, I mosel hear that! Ogowe presta! Leste, before Julia sees her! Ishekarry and washemeskad, the carishy caratimaney? Whole ladyfair? Duodecimoroon? Bonaventura? Malagassy? What had she on, the liddel oud oddity? How much did she scallop, harness and weights? Here she is, Amnisty Ann! Call her calamity electrifies man.
Mrs Quickenough:
No electress at all but old Moppa Necessity, angin mother of injons. I'll tell you a test. But you must sit still. Will you hold your peace and listen well to what I am going to say now? It might have been ten or twenty to one of the night of Allclose or the nexth of April when the flip of her hoogly igloo flappered and out toetippit a bushmam woman, the dearest little moma ever you saw, nodding around her, all smiles, with ems of embarras and aues to awe, between two ages, a judy queen not up to your elb. Quick, look at her cute and saise her quirk for the bicker she lives the slicker she grows.
Miss Dodpebble:
Save us and tagus! No more? Werra, where in ourthe did you ever pick a Lambay chop as big as a battering ram?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, you're right. I'm epte to forgetting, like Liviam Liddle did Loveme Long. The linth of my hough, I say! She wore a ploughboy's nailstudded clogs, a pair of ploughfields in themselves: a sugarloaf hat with a gaudyquiviry peak and a band of gorse for an arnoment and a hundred streamers dancing off it, all aflume, and a guildered pin to pierce it: owlglassy bicycles boggled her eyes: and a fishnetzeveil for the sun not to spoil the wrinklings of her hydeaspects: potatorings boucled the loose laubes of her laudesnarers: her nude cuba stockings were salmonspotspeckled: she sported a galligo shimmy of hazevaipar tinto that never was fast till it ran in the washing: stout stays, the rivals, lined her length: her bloodorange bockknickers, a two in one garment, showed natural nigger boggers, fancyfastened, free to undo: her blackstripe tan joseph was sequansewn and teddybearlined, with wavy rushgreen epaulettes and a leadown here and there of royal swansruff: a brace of gaspers stuck in her hayrope garters: her civvy codroy coat with alpheubett buttons was boundaried round with a twobar tunnel belt: a fourpenny bit in each pocketside weighed her safe from the blowaway windrush: she had a clothespeg tight astride on her joki's nose and she kept on grinding a sommething quaint in her fiumy mouth: and the rrreke of the fluve of the tail of the gawan of her snuffdrab siouler's skirt trailed ffiffty odd Irish miles behind her lungarhodes.
Miss Dodpebble:
Hellsbells, I'm sorry I missed her! Sweet gumptyum and nobody fainted. But in whelk of her mouths? Was her naze alight?
Mrs Quickenough:
Everyone that saw her said the dowce little delia looked a bit queer.
Miss Dodpebble:
Lotsy trotsy, mind the poddle! Missus, be good and don't fol in the say!
Mrs Quickenough:
Fenny poor hex she must have charred. Kickhams a frumpier ever you saw. Making mush mullet's eyes at her boys dobelon. And they crowned her their chariton queen, all the maids.
Miss Dodpebble:
Of the may? You don't say!
Mrs Quickenough:
Well for her she couldn't see herself. I recknitz wharfore the darling murrayed her mirror.
Miss Dodpebble:
She did? Mersey me!
Mrs Quickenough:
There was a koros of drouthdropping surfacemen, boomslanging and plugchewing, fruiteyeing and flowerfeeding, in contemplation of the fluctuation and the undification of her filimentation, lolling and leasing on North Lazers' Waal all eelfare week by the Jukar Yoick's and as soon as they saw her meander by that marritime way in her grasswinter's weeds and twigged who was under her archdeaconess's bonnet, Avondale's fish and Clarence's poison, wheezes an to anaber, Wit-upon-Crutches to Master Bates: Between our two southsates and the granite they're warming, either her face has been lifted or Alp has doped.
Miss Dodpebble:
But what was the game in her mixed baggyrhatty? Just the tembo in her tumbo or pilipili from her pepperpot? Saas and taas and specis bizaas. And where in thunder did she plunder? Fore the battle or efter the ball? I want to get it frisk from the soorce. I aubette my bearb it's worth while poaching on. Shake it up, do! do! That’s a good old son of a ditch! Raddle-me-rurally the restigouche. I promise I’ll make it wentworthe your while. and I don’t mean maybe. Not yet with a goodfor. Spey me pruth and I’ll tale you true.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, arundgirond in a waveney lyne aringarouma she pattered and swung and sidled, dribbling her boulder through narrowa mosses, the diliskydrear on our drier side and the vildevetchvine agin us, curara here, careero there, not knowing which medway or wheser to strike it, edereider, making chattahoochee all to her ain chichui, like Santa Claus at the cree of the pale and puny, nistling to hear for their tiny hearties, her arms encircling Isolabella, then running with reconciled Romas and Reims, then bathing Dirty Hans' spatters with spittle, on like a lech to be off like a dart, with a Christmas box apiece for aisch and iveryone of her childer, the birthday gifts they dreamt they gave her, the spoiled she fleetly laid at our door. On the matt, by the pourch and inunder the cellar. The rivulets ran aflod to see, the glashaboys, the pollynooties. Out of the paunschaup on to the pyre. And they all about her, juvenile leads and ingenuinas, from the slime of their slums and artesaned wellings, rickets and riots, like the Smyly boys at their vicereine's levee, chipping her and raising a bit of a chir or a ary, Vivi vienne, little Annchen! Vielo Anno, high life! Sing us a sula, O Susuria! Ausone sidulcis! Hasn't she tambre!, every dive she'd neb in her culdee sacco of wabbash she raabed and reach out her maundy meerschaundize, poor souvenir as per ricorder and all for sore aringarung, stinkers and heelers, laggards and primelads, her furzeborn sons and dribblederry daughters, a thousand and one of them, and wickerpotluck for each of them. For evil and ever. And kiks the buch. A tinker's bann and a barrow to boil his billy for Gipsy Lee: a cartridge of cockaleekie soup for Chummy the Guardsman: for sulky Pender's acid nephew deltoid drops, curiously strong: a cough and a rattle and wildrose cheeks for poor Piccolina Petite MacFarlane: a jigsaw puzzle of needles and pins and blankets and shins between them for Isabel, Jezebel and Llewelyn Mmarriage: a brazen nose and pigiron mittens for Johnny Walker Beg: a papar flag of the saints and stripes for Kevineen O'Dea: a puffpuff for Pudge Craig and a nightmarching hare for Techertim Tombigby: waterleg and gumboots each for Bully Hayes and Hurricane Hartigan: a prodigal heart and fatted calves for Buck Jones, the pride of Clonliffe: a loaf of bread and a father's early aim for Val from Skibereen: a jauntingcar for Larry Doolin, the Ballyclee jackeen: a seasick trip on a government ship for Teague O'Flanagan: a louse and trap for Jerry Coyle: slushmincepies for Andy Mackenzie: a hairclip and clackdish for Penceless Peter: that twelve sounds look for G. V. Brooke: a drowned doll to face downwards for modest Sister Anne Mortimer: altar falls for Blanchisse's bed: Wildairs' breechettes for Magpeg Woppington: for Sue Dot a big eye, for Sam Dash a false step: snakes in clover, picked and scotched, and a vaticanned vipercatcher's visa for Patsy Presbys: a reiz every morning for Standfast Dick and a drop every minute for Stumblestone Davy: scruboak beads for beatified Biddy: two appletweed stools for Eva Mobbely: for Saara Philpot a jordan vale tearorne: a pretty box of Pettyfib's Powder for Eileen Aruna to whiten her teeth and outflash Helen Arhone: a whipping top for Eddy Lawless: for Kitty Coleraine of Butterman's Lane a penny wise for her foolish pitcher: a putty shovel for Terry the Puckaun: an apotamus mask for Promoter Dunne: a niester egg with a twicedated shell and a dynamight right for Pavl the Curate: a collera morbous for Mann in the Cloack: a starr and girton for Draper and Deane: for Will-of-the-Wisp and Barny-the-Bark two mangolds noble to sweeden their bitters: for Oliver Bound a way in his frey: for Seumas, thought little, a crown he feels big: a tibertine's pile with a Congoswood cross on the back for Sunny Twimjim: a praises be and spare me days for Brian the Bravo: penteplenty of pity with lubilashings of lust for Olona Lena Magdalena: for Camilla, Dromilla, Ludmilla, Mamilla, a bucket, a packet, a book and a pillow: for Nancy Shannon a Tuami brooch: for Dora Riparia Hopeandwater a cooling douche and a warmingpan: a pair of Blarney braggs for Wally Meagher: a hairpin slatepencil for Elsie Oram to scratch her toby, doing her best with her volgar fractions: an old age pension for Betty Bellezza: a bag of the blues for Funny Fitz: a Missa pro Messa for Taff de Taff: Jill, the spoon of a girl, for Jack, the broth of a boy: a Rogerson Crusoe's Friday fast for Caducus Angelus Rubiconstein: three hundred and sixtysix poplin tyne for revery warp in the weaver's woof for Victor Hugoknot: a stiff steaded rake and good varians muck for Kate theCleaner: a hole in the ballad for Hosty: two dozen of cradles for J. F. X. P. Coppinger: tenpounten on the pop for the daulphins born with five spoiled squibs for Infanta: a letter to last a lifetime for Maggi beyond by the ashpit: the heftiest frozenmeat woman from Lusk to Livienbad for Felim the Ferry: spas and speranza and symposum's syrup for decayed and blind and gouty Gough: a change of naves and joys of ills for Armoricus Tristram Amoor Saint Lawrence: a guillotine shirt for Reuben Redbreast und hempen suspendeats for Brennan on the Moor: an oakanknee for Conditor Sawyer and musquodoboits for Great Tropical Scott: a peduncle for Karmalite Kane: a sunless map of the month, including the sword and stamps for Shemus O'Shaun the Post: a jackal with hide for Browne but Nolan: a stonecold shoulder for Donn Joe Vance: all lock and no stable for Honorbright Merreytrickx: a big drum for Billy Dunboyne: a guiltygoldeny bellows, below me blow me, for Ida Ida and a Hushaby rocker, Elletrouvetout for Who-is-silvier — Where-is-he?: whatever you like to swilly to swash, Yuinness or Yennessy, Laagen or Niger, for Festus King and Roaring Peter and Frisky Shorty and Treacle Tom and O. B. Behan and Sully the Thug and Master Magrath and Peter Cloran and O'Delawarr Rossa and Nerone MacPacem and whoever you chance to meet knocking around: and a pig's bladder balloon for Selina Susquehanna Stakelum.
Miss Dodpebble:
But what did she give to Pruda Ward and Katty Kanel and Peggy Quilty and Briery Brosna and Teasy Kieran and Ena Lappin and Muriel Maassy and Zusan Camac and Melissa Brandogue and Flora Ferns and Fauna Fox-Goodman and Grettna Greaney and Penelope Inglesante and Lezba Licking like Leytha Liane and Roxana Rohan with Simpatica Sohan and Una Bina Laterza and Trina La Mesme and Philomena O'Farrell and Irmak Elly and Josephine Foyle and Snakeshead Lily and Fountainoy Laura and Marie Xavier Agnes Daisy Frances de Sales Macleay?
Mrs Quickenough:
She gave them ilcka madre's daughter a moonflower and a bloodvein: but the grapes that ripe before reason to them that divide the vinedress. So on Izzy, her shamemaid, love shone befond her tears as from Shem, her penmight, life past befoul his prime.
Miss Dodpebble:
My colonial, wardha bagful! A bakereen's dusind with a tithe of tillies to boot. That's what you may call a tale of a tub. And Hibernonian market too. All that and more under one crinoline envelope if you dare to break the porkbarrel seal. No wonder they'd run from her pison plague.
Miss Dodpebble:
The spot I'll seek if the hour you'll find. My chart shines high where the blue milk's upset. Forgivemequick, I'm going! Bubye! And you, pluck your watch, forgetmenot. Your evenlode. So save to jurna's end!
Mrs Quickenough:
Old voice:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos.
Young voice:
I feel as old as yonder elm.
Old:
A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us!
Young:
Night!
Old:
Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Old:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Young:
Night now!
Old:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Young:
Night
Old:
night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
Here's Marcella Riordan's 1998 abridged recording, which is on audible, strongly influenced by McKenna:
Old:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us!
Young:
Night!
Old:
Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Old:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Young:
Night now!
Old:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Young:
Night
Old:
night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
My wrists are rwusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it!
Miss Dodpebble:
What was it he did a tail at all on Animal Sendai? And how long was he under loch and neagh?
Mrs Quickenough:
It was put in the newses what he did, nicies and priers, the King fierceas Humphrey, with illysus distilling, exploits and all. But toms will till. I know he well. Temp untamed will hist for no man. As you spring so shall you neap. O, the roughty old rappe! Minxing marrage and making loof. Reeve Gootch was right and Reeve Drughad was sinistrous. And the cut of him! And the strut of him! How he used to hold his head as high as a howeth, the famous eld duke alien, with a hump of grandeur on him like a walking wiesel rat! And his derry's own drawl and his corksown blather and his doubling stutter and his gullaway swank. Ask Lictor Hackett or Lector Reade or Garda Growley or the Boy with the Billyclub.
Miss Dodpebble:
How elster is he a called at all?
Mrs Quickenough:
Qu'appelle? Huges Caput Earlyfouler.
Miss Dodpebble:
Or where was he born or how was he found? Urgothland, Tvistown on the Kattekat? New Hunshire, Concord on the Merrimake? Who blocksmitt her saft anvil or yelled lep to her pail? Was her banns never loosened in Adam and Eve's or were him and her but captain spliced? For mine etherduck I thee drake. And by my wildgaze I thee gander. Flowey and Mount on the brink of time makes wishes and fears for a happy isthmass. She can show all her lines, with love, licence to play. And if they don't remarry that hook and eye may.
Mrs Quickenough:
O, passmore that and oxus another! Don Dom Dombdomb and his wee follyo!
Miss Dodpebble:
Was his help inshored in the Stork and Pelican against bungelars, flu and third risk parties? I heard he dug good tin with his doll, delvan first and duvlin after, when he raped her home, Sabrine asthore, in a perokeet's cage, by dredgerous lands and devious delts, playing catched and mythed with the gleam of her shadda (if a flic had been there to pop up and pepper him!), past auld min's manse and Maisons Allfou and the rest of incurables and the last of immurables, the quaggy waag for stumbling.
Mrs Quickenough:
Who sold you that jackalantern's tale? Pemmican's pasty pie! Not a grasshoop to ring her, not an antsgrain of ore. In a gabbard he barqued it, the boat of life, from the harbourless Ivernikan Okean, till he spied the loom of his landfall and he loosed two croakers from under his tilt, the gran Phenician rover. By the smell of her kelp they made the pigeonhouse.
Miss Dodpebble:
Like fun they did! But where was Himself, the timoneer?
Mrs Quickenough:
That marchantman he suivied their scutties right over the wash, his cameleer's burnous breezing up on him, till with his runagate bowmpriss he roade and borst her bar.
Miss Dodpebble:
Pilcomayo! Suchcaughtawan! And the whale's away with the grayling!
Mrs Quickenough:
Tune your pipes and fall ahumming, you born ijypt, and you're nothing short of one!
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, ptellomy soon and curb your escumo.
Mrs Quickenough:
When they saw him shoot swift up her sheba sheath, like any gay lord salomon, her bulls they were ruhring, surfed with spree. Boyarka buah! Boyana bueh! He erned his lille Bunbath hard, our staly brede, the trader.
Miss Dodpebble:
He did. Look at here. In this wet of his prow. Didn't you know he was kalled a bairn of the brine, Wasserbourne the waterbaby?
Mrs Quickenough:
Havemmarea, so he was. H.C.E. has a codfisck ee. Shur, she's nearly as badher as him herself.
Miss Dodpebble:
Who? Anna Livia?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, Anna Livia! Do you know she was calling bakvandets sals from all around, nyumba noo, chamba choo, to go in till him, her erring cheef, and tickle the pontiff aisy-oisy?
Miss Dodpebble:
She was? Gota pot! Yssel that the limmat!
Mrs Quickenough:
As El Negro winced when he wonced in La Plate.
Miss Dodpebble:
O, tell me all I want to hear, how loft she was lift a laddery dextro!
Mrs Quickenough:
A coneywink after the bunting fell. Letting on she didn't care, sina feza, me absantee, him man in passession, the proxenete!
Miss Dodpebble:
Proxenete and phwhat is phthat? Emme for your reussischer's Honddu jarkon! Tell us in franca langua. And call a spate a spate.
Mrs Quickenough:
Did they never sharee you ebro at skol, you antiabecedarian? It's just the same as if I was to go par examplum now in conservancy's cause out of telekinesis and proxenete you.
Miss Dodpebble:
For Coxyt sake and is that what she is? Botlettle I thought she'd act that loa.
Mrs Quickenough:
Didn't you spot her in her windaug, wubbling up on an osiery chair, with a meusic before her all cunniform letters, pretending to ribble a reedy derg on a fiddle she bogans without a band on? Sure she can't fiddan a dee, with bow or abandon! Srue, she can't!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tista suck. Well, I never now heard the like of that! Tell me moher. Tell me moatst.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, old Humber was as glommen as grampus, with the tares at his thor and the buboes for ages and neither bowman nor shot abroad and bales allbrant on the crests of rockies and nera lamp in kitchen or church and giant's holes in Grafton's causeway and deathcap mushrooms round Funglus' grave and the great tribune's barrow all darnels ocummule, sittang sambre on his sett, drammen and drommen, usking queasy quizzers of his ruful continence, his childlinen scarf to encourage his obsequies, where he'd check their debths in that mormon's thames, be questing and handsel, hop, step and a deepend, with his berths in their toiling moil, his swallower open from swolf to fore and the snipes of the gutter pecking his crocs, hungerstriking all alone and holding doomsdag over hunselv, dreeing his weird with his dander up and his fringe combed over his eygs and droming on loft till the sight of the sternes after zwarthy kowse and weedy broeks and the tits of buddy and the loits of pest and to peer was Parish worth thette mess. You'd think all was dodo belonging to him, how he durmed adranse in durance vaal. He had been belching for severn years. And there she was, Anna Livia, she darent catch a winkle of sleep, purling around like a chit of a child, Wendawanda, a fingerthick, in a Lapsummer skirt and damazon cheeks for to ishim bonzour to her dear dubber Dan. With neuphraties and sault from his maggias. And an odd time she'd cook him up blooms of fisk and lay to his heartsfoot her meddery eygs, yayis, and staynish beacons on toasc and a cupenhave so weeshwaashy of greenland's tay or a dzoupgan of mokau kaffue au sable or Sinkiang sukry or his ale of ferns in trueartpewter and a shinkobread (hamjambo, bana?) for to plaise that man hog stay his stomicker till her pyrraknees shrunk to nutmeg graters while her togglejoints shuck with goyt, and as rash as she'd russ with her peakload of vivers up on her sieve (metauwero rage it swales and rieses!) my hardey Hek he'd kast them frome him with a stour of scorn as much as to say you sow and you sozh, and if he didn't peg the platteau on her tawe, believe you me, she was safe enough. And then she'd esk to vistule a hymn, The Heart Bowed Down or The Rakes of Mallow or Chelli Michele's La Calumnia è un Vermicelli or a balfy bit or Old Jo Robidson. Sucho fuffing a fifeing 'twould cut you in two! She'd bate the hen that crowed on the turrace of Babbel. What harm if she knew how to cockle her mouth! And not a mag out of Hum no more than out of the mangle weight.
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that a faith?
Mrs Quickenough:
That's the fact. Then riding the ricka and roya romanche, Annona, gebroren aroostokrat Nivia, dochther of Sense and Art, with Sparks' pirryphlickathims funkling her fan anner frostivying tresses dasht with virevlies — while the prom beauties sreeked nith their bearers' skins! — in a period gown of changeable jade that would robe the wood of two cardinals' chairs and crush poor Cullen and smother MacCabe.
Miss Dodpebble:
O blazerskate! Theirs porpor patches!
Mrs Quickenough:
And brahming to him down the feedchute, with her femtyfyx kinds of fondling endings, the poother rambling off her nose: Vuggybarney, Wickerymandy! Hello, ducky, please don't die! Do you know what she started cheeping after, with a choicey voicey like waterglucks or Madame Delba to Romeoreszk? You'll never guess.
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me. Tell me.
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me. Tell me.
Mrs Quickenough:
Phoebe, dearest, tell, O tell me and I loved you better nor you knew. And letting on hoon var daft about the old warbly sangs from over holmen, High hellskirt saw ladies hensmoker lilyhung pigger, and soay and soan and so firth and so forth in a tone sonora, and Oom Bothar below like Bheri-Bheri in his sandy cloak, so umvolosy, as deaf as a yawn, the stult!
Miss Dodpebble:
Go away! Poor deef old deery! Yare only teesing! Anna Liv?
Mrs Quickenough:
As Chalk is my judge! And didn't she up in sorgue and go and trot doon and stand in her douro, puffing her old dudheen, and every shirvant siligiril or wensum farmerette walking the pilend roads, Sowy, Fundally, Daery or Maery, Milucre, Awny or Graw, usedn't she make her a simp or a sign to slip inside by the sullyport?
Miss Dodpebble:
You don't say the sillypost?
Mrs Quickenough:
Bedouix but I do! Calling them in one by one (To Blockbeddum here! Here the Shoebenacaddie!) and legging a jig or so on the sihl to show them how to shake their benders and the dainty how to bring to mind the gladdest garments out of sight and all the way of a maid with a man and making a sort of a cackling noise like two and a penny or half a crown and holding up a silliver shiner.
Miss Dodpebble:
Lordy, lordy, did she so? Well, of all the ones ever I heard! Throwing all the neiss little whores in the world at him!
Mrs Quickenough:
To inny captured wench you wish of no matter what sex of pleissful ways two adda tammar a lizzy a lossie to hug and hab haven in Humpy's apron!
Miss Dodpebble:
And what was the wyerye rima she made? Odet! Odet! Tell me the trent of it while I'm lathering hail out of Denis Florence MacCarthy's combies. Rise it, flut ye, pian piena! I'm dying down off my iodine feet until I lerryn Anna Livia's cushingloo, that was writ by one and rede by two and trouved by a poule in the parco!
Mrs Quickenough:
I can see that. I see you are.
Miss Dodpebble:
How does it tummel?
Mrs Quickenough
Listen now. Are you listening?
Miss Dodpobble:
Yes, yes! Indeed I am!
Mrs Quickenough:
Tarn your ore ouse. Essonne inne.
By earth and the cloudy but I badly want a brandnew bankside, bedamp and I do, and a plumper at that!
For the putty affair I have is wore out, so it is, sitting, yaping and waiting for my old Dane hodder dodderer, my life in death companion, my frugal key of our larder, my much altered camel's hump, my jointspoiler, my maymoon's honey, my fool to the last Decemberer, to wake himself out of his winter's doze and bore me down like he used to.
Is there irwell a lord of the manor or a knight of the shire at strike, I wonder, that'd dip me a dace or two in cash for washing and darning his worshipful socks for him now we're run out of horsebrose and milk?
Only for my short Brittas bed I made's as snug as it smells it's out I'd lep and off with me to the slobs della Tolka or the plage au Clontarf to feale the gay aire of my salt troublin bay and the race of the saywint up me ambushure.
Miss Dodpebble:
Onon! Onon! Tel me more. Andelle me every tiny teign. I want to know every single ingul. Down to what made the potters fly into jagsthole. And why were the vesles vet. That homa fever's winning me wome. If a mahun of the horse but hard me! We'd be bundukiboi meet askarigal.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, now comes the hazelhatchery part. After Clondalkin the Kings's Inns. We'll soon be there with the freshet.
Miss Dodpebble:
How many aleveens had she in toll?
Mrs Quickenough:
I can't rightly rede you that. Close only knows. Some say she had three figures to fill and confined herself to a hundred eleven, wan by wan by wan, making meanacuminamoyas.
Miss Dodpebble
Olaph lamm et, all that pack? We won't have room in the kirkeyaard.
Mrs Quickenough
She can't remember half of the cradlenames she smacked on them by the grace of her boxing bishop's infallible slipper, the cane for Kund and abbles for Eyolf and ayther nayther for Yakov Yea.
Miss Dodpebble:
A hundred and how? They did well to rechristien her Pluhurabelle. O loreley! What a loddon lodes! Heigho!
Mrs Quickenough:
But it's quite on the cards she'll shed more and merrier, twills and trills, sparefours and spoilfives, nordsihks and sudsevers and ayes and neins to a litter. Grandfarthing nap and Messamisery and the knave of all knaves and the joker.
Miss Dodpobble:
Heehaw! She must have been a gadabout in her day, so she must, more than most.
Mrs Quickenough:
Shoal she was, gidgad! She had a flewmen of her owen. Then a toss nare scared that lass, so aimai moe, that's agapo!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me, tell me, how cam she camlin through all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline?
Mrs Quickenough:
Casting her perils before our swains, from Fonte-in-Monte to Tidingtown and from Tidingtown tilhavet. Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway.
Miss Dodpobble
Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman Peace or Polistaman. That's the thing I'm elwys on edge to esk. Push var and push vardar and come to uphill headquarters! Was it waterlows year, after Grattan or Flood, or when maids were in Arc or when three stood hosting?
Mrs Quickenough
Fidaris will find where the Doubt arises like Niemen from Nirgends found the Nihil. Worry you sighin foh, Albern, O Anser?
Miss Dodpobble:
Untie the gemman's fistiknots, Qvic and Nuancee!
Mrs Quickenough
She can't put her hand on him for the moment. Tez thelon langlo, walking weary! Such a loon werrabackwoods to row! She sid herself she hardly knows whuon the annals her graveller was, a dynast of Leinster, a wolf of the sea, or what he did or how blyth she played or how, when, why, where and who offon he jumpnad her and how it was gave her away. She was just a young thin pale soft shy slim slip of a thing then, sauntering by silvamoonlake, and he was a heavy trudging lurching lieabroad of a Curraghman, making his hay for whose sun to shine on, as tough as the oaktrees (peats be with them!) used to rustle that time down by the dykes of killing Kildare, for forstfellfoss with a plash across her. She thought she'd sankh neathe the ground with nymphant shame when he gave her the tigris eye!
Miss Dodpebble:
O happy fault! Me wish it was he!
Mrs Quickenough:
You're wrong there, corribly wrong! 'Tisn't only tonight you're anacheronistic! It was ages behind that when nullahs were nowhere, in county Wickenlow, garden of Erin, before she ever dreamt she'd lave Kilbride and go foaming under Horsepass bridge, with the great southerwestern windstorming her traces and the midland's grainwaster asarch for her track, to wend her ways byandby, robecca or worse, to spin and to grind, to swab and to thrash, for all her golden lifey in the barleyfields and pennylotts of Humphrey's fordofhurdlestown and lie with a landleaper, wellingtonorseher.
Miss Dodpebble:
And what was the wyerye rima she made? Odet! Odet! Tell me the trent of it while I'm lathering hail out of Denis Florence MacCarthy's combies. Rise it, flut ye, pian piena! I'm dying down off my iodine feet until I lerryn Anna Livia's cushingloo, that was writ by one and rede by two and trouved by a poule in the parco!
Mrs Quickenough:
I can see that. I see you are.
Miss Dodpebble:
How does it tummel?
Mrs Quickenough
Listen now. Are you listening?
Miss Dodpobble:
Yes, yes! Indeed I am!
Mrs Quickenough:
Tarn your ore ouse. Essonne inne.
By earth and the cloudy but I badly want a brandnew bankside, bedamp and I do, and a plumper at that!
For the putty affair I have is wore out, so it is, sitting, yaping and waiting for my old Dane hodder dodderer, my life in death companion, my frugal key of our larder, my much altered camel's hump, my jointspoiler, my maymoon's honey, my fool to the last Decemberer, to wake himself out of his winter's doze and bore me down like he used to.
Is there irwell a lord of the manor or a knight of the shire at strike, I wonder, that'd dip me a dace or two in cash for washing and darning his worshipful socks for him now we're run out of horsebrose and milk?
Only for my short Brittas bed I made's as snug as it smells it's out I'd lep and off with me to the slobs della Tolka or the plage au Clontarf to feale the gay aire of my salt troublin bay and the race of the saywint up me ambushure.
Miss Dodpebble:
Onon! Onon! Tel me more. Andelle me every tiny teign. I want to know every single ingul. Down to what made the potters fly into jagsthole. And why were the vesles vet. That homa fever's winning me wome. If a mahun of the horse but hard me! We'd be bundukiboi meet askarigal.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, now comes the hazelhatchery part. After Clondalkin the Kings's Inns. We'll soon be there with the freshet.
Miss Dodpebble:
How many aleveens had she in toll?
Mrs Quickenough:
I can't rightly rede you that. Close only knows. Some say she had three figures to fill and confined herself to a hundred eleven, wan by wan by wan, making meanacuminamoyas.
Miss Dodpebble
Olaph lamm et, all that pack? We won't have room in the kirkeyaard.
Mrs Quickenough
She can't remember half of the cradlenames she smacked on them by the grace of her boxing bishop's infallible slipper, the cane for Kund and abbles for Eyolf and ayther nayther for Yakov Yea.
Miss Dodpebble:
A hundred and how? They did well to rechristien her Pluhurabelle. O loreley! What a loddon lodes! Heigho!
Mrs Quickenough:
But it's quite on the cards she'll shed more and merrier, twills and trills, sparefours and spoilfives, nordsihks and sudsevers and ayes and neins to a litter. Grandfarthing nap and Messamisery and the knave of all knaves and the joker.
Miss Dodpobble:
Heehaw! She must have been a gadabout in her day, so she must, more than most.
Mrs Quickenough:
Shoal she was, gidgad! She had a flewmen of her owen. Then a toss nare scared that lass, so aimai moe, that's agapo!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me, tell me, how cam she camlin through all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline?
Mrs Quickenough:
Casting her perils before our swains, from Fonte-in-Monte to Tidingtown and from Tidingtown tilhavet. Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway.
Miss Dodpobble
Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman Peace or Polistaman. That's the thing I'm elwys on edge to esk. Push var and push vardar and come to uphill headquarters! Was it waterlows year, after Grattan or Flood, or when maids were in Arc or when three stood hosting?
Mrs Quickenough
Fidaris will find where the Doubt arises like Niemen from Nirgends found the Nihil. Worry you sighin foh, Albern, O Anser?
Miss Dodpobble:
Untie the gemman's fistiknots, Qvic and Nuancee!
Mrs Quickenough
She can't put her hand on him for the moment. Tez thelon langlo, walking weary! Such a loon werrabackwoods to row! She sid herself she hardly knows whuon the annals her graveller was, a dynast of Leinster, a wolf of the sea, or what he did or how blyth she played or how, when, why, where and who offon he jumpnad her and how it was gave her away. She was just a young thin pale soft shy slim slip of a thing then, sauntering by silvamoonlake, and he was a heavy trudging lurching lieabroad of a Curraghman, making his hay for whose sun to shine on, as tough as the oaktrees (peats be with them!) used to rustle that time down by the dykes of killing Kildare, for forstfellfoss with a plash across her. She thought she'd sankh neathe the ground with nymphant shame when he gave her the tigris eye!
Miss Dodpebble:
O happy fault! Me wish it was he!
Mrs Quickenough:
You're wrong there, corribly wrong! 'Tisn't only tonight you're anacheronistic! It was ages behind that when nullahs were nowhere, in county Wickenlow, garden of Erin, before she ever dreamt she'd lave Kilbride and go foaming under Horsepass bridge, with the great southerwestern windstorming her traces and the midland's grainwaster asarch for her track, to wend her ways byandby, robecca or worse, to spin and to grind, to swab and to thrash, for all her golden lifey in the barleyfields and pennylotts of Humphrey's fordofhurdlestown and lie with a landleaper, wellingtonorseher.
 |
| Photo by Mike Bunn |
Miss Dodpebble:
Alesse, the lagos of girly days! For the dove of the dunas! Wasut? Izod? Are you sarthe an suir? Not where the Finn fits into the Mourne, not where the Nore takes lieve of Bloem, not where the Braye divarts the Farer, not where the Moy changez her minds twixt Cullin and Conn and tween Cunn and Collin? Or where Neptune sculled and Tritonville rowed and leandros three bumped heroines two?
Mrs Quickenough:
Neya, narev, nen, nonni, nos!
Miss Dodpebble:
Then whereabouts in Ow and Ovoca? Was it ystwith wyst or Lucan Yokan or where the hand of man has never set foot? Dell me where, the fairy ferse time!
Mrs Quickenough:
I will if you listen. You know the dinkel dale of Luggelaw? Well, there once dwelt a local heremite, Michael Arklow was his riverend name (with many a sigh I aspersed his lavabibs!), and one venersderg in junojuly, oso sweet and so cool and so limber she looked, Nance the Nixie, Nanon L'Escaut, in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling, he plunged both of his newly anointed hands to the core of his cushlas in her singimari saffron strumans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it, that was deepdark and ample like this red bog at sundown. By that Vale Vowclose's lucydlac, the reignbeau's heavenarches arronged orranged her. Afrothdizzying galbs, her enamelled eyes indergoading him on to the vierge violetian.
Miss Dodpebble:
Wish a wish!
Mrs Quickenough:
Why a why?
Mrs Quickenough:
Why a why?
Miss Dodpebble:
Mavro!
Mrs Quickenough:
Letty Lerck's lafing light throw those laurals now on her daphdaph teasesong petrock.
Miss Dodpebble:
Maass!
Miss Dodpebble:
Maass!
Mrs Quickenough:
But the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes. And Simba the Slayer of his Oga is slewd. He cuddle not help himself, thurso that hot on him, he had to forget the monk in the man, so, rubbing her up and smoothing her down, he baised his lippes in smiling mood, kiss akiss after kisokushk (as he warned her niver to, niver to, nevar), on Anna-na-Poghue's freckled forehead. While you'd parse secheressa she hielt her souff. But she ruz two feet hire in her aisne aestumation. And steppes on stilts ever since. That was kissuahealing with bantur for balm!
Miss Dodpebble:
O, wasn't he the bold priest? And wasn't she the naughty Livvy?
Mrs Quickenough:
Nautic Naama's now her navn. Two lads in scoutsch breeches went through her before that, Barefoot Byrne and Wallowme Wade, Lugnaquillia's noblesse pickts, before she had a hint of a hair at her fanny to hide or a bossom to tempt a birch canoedler, not to mention a bulgic porterhorse barge. And ere that again, leada, laida, all unraidy, too faint to buoy the fairiest rider, too frail to flirt with a cygnet's plume, she was licked by a hound, Chirripa-Churruta, while poing her pee, pure and simple, on the spur of the hill in old Kippure, in birdsong and shearingtime, but first of all, worst of all, the wiggly livvly, she sideslipped out by a gap in the Devil's Glen while Sally her nurse was sound asleep in a sloot and, feefee fiefie, fell over a spillway before she found her stride and lay and wriggled in all the stagnant black pools of rainy under a fallow coo and she laughed innocefree with her limbs aloft and a whole drove of maiden hawthorns blushing and looking askance upon her.
Miss Dodpebble:
Drop me the sound of the findhorn's name. Mtu or mti, sombogger was wisness. And drip me why in the flenders was she frickled. And trickle me through was she marcellewaved or was it weirdly a wig she wore. And whitside did they droop their glows in their florry, aback to wist or affront to sea? In fear to hear the dear so near or longing loth and loathing longing?
Mrs Quickenough:
Are you in the swim or are you out?
Miss Dodpebble:
O go in, go on, go an! I mean about what you know.
Mrs Quicknenough:
I know right well what you mean. Rother! You'd like the coifs and guimpes, snouty, and me to do the greasy jub on old Veronica's wipers.
Miss Dodpebble
What am I rancing now and I'll thank you? Is it a pinny or is it a surplice?
Mrs Quickenough:
Arran, where's your nose? And where's the starch? That's not the vesdre benediction smell. I can tell from here by their eau de Colo and the scent of her oder they're Mrs Magrath's. And you ought to have aird them. They've moist come off her. Creases in silk they are, not crampton lawn. Baptiste me, father, for she has sinned! Through her catchment ring she freed them easy, with her hips' hurrahs for her knees' dontelleries. The only parr with frills in old the plain.
Miss Dodpebble:
So they are, I declare! Welland well! If tomorrow keeps fine who'll come tripping to sightsee?
Mrs Quickenough:
How'll? Axe me next what I haven't got! The Belvedarean exhibitioners. In their cruisery caps and oarsclub colours. What hoo, they band! And what hoa, they buck! And there's her nubilee letters too. Ellis on quay in scarlet thread. Linked for the world on a flushcaloured field. Annan exe after to show they're not Laura Keown's.
Miss Dodpebble:
O, may the diabolo twisk your seifety pin!
Mrs Quickenough:
You child of Mammon, Kinsella's Lilith! Now, who has been tearing the leg of her drawars on her?
Miss Dodpebble:
Which leg is it?
Mrs Quickenough:
The one with the bells on it. Rinse them out and aston along with you! Where did I stop?
Miss Dodpebble:
Never stop. Continuarration! You're not there yet. I amstel waiting. Garonne, garonne!
Miss Dodpebble:
O, wasn't he the bold priest? And wasn't she the naughty Livvy?
Mrs Quickenough:
Nautic Naama's now her navn. Two lads in scoutsch breeches went through her before that, Barefoot Byrne and Wallowme Wade, Lugnaquillia's noblesse pickts, before she had a hint of a hair at her fanny to hide or a bossom to tempt a birch canoedler, not to mention a bulgic porterhorse barge. And ere that again, leada, laida, all unraidy, too faint to buoy the fairiest rider, too frail to flirt with a cygnet's plume, she was licked by a hound, Chirripa-Churruta, while poing her pee, pure and simple, on the spur of the hill in old Kippure, in birdsong and shearingtime, but first of all, worst of all, the wiggly livvly, she sideslipped out by a gap in the Devil's Glen while Sally her nurse was sound asleep in a sloot and, feefee fiefie, fell over a spillway before she found her stride and lay and wriggled in all the stagnant black pools of rainy under a fallow coo and she laughed innocefree with her limbs aloft and a whole drove of maiden hawthorns blushing and looking askance upon her.
Miss Dodpebble:
Drop me the sound of the findhorn's name. Mtu or mti, sombogger was wisness. And drip me why in the flenders was she frickled. And trickle me through was she marcellewaved or was it weirdly a wig she wore. And whitside did they droop their glows in their florry, aback to wist or affront to sea? In fear to hear the dear so near or longing loth and loathing longing?
Mrs Quickenough:
Are you in the swim or are you out?
Miss Dodpebble:
O go in, go on, go an! I mean about what you know.
Mrs Quicknenough:
I know right well what you mean. Rother! You'd like the coifs and guimpes, snouty, and me to do the greasy jub on old Veronica's wipers.
Miss Dodpebble
What am I rancing now and I'll thank you? Is it a pinny or is it a surplice?
Mrs Quickenough:
Arran, where's your nose? And where's the starch? That's not the vesdre benediction smell. I can tell from here by their eau de Colo and the scent of her oder they're Mrs Magrath's. And you ought to have aird them. They've moist come off her. Creases in silk they are, not crampton lawn. Baptiste me, father, for she has sinned! Through her catchment ring she freed them easy, with her hips' hurrahs for her knees' dontelleries. The only parr with frills in old the plain.
Miss Dodpebble:
So they are, I declare! Welland well! If tomorrow keeps fine who'll come tripping to sightsee?
Mrs Quickenough:
How'll? Axe me next what I haven't got! The Belvedarean exhibitioners. In their cruisery caps and oarsclub colours. What hoo, they band! And what hoa, they buck! And there's her nubilee letters too. Ellis on quay in scarlet thread. Linked for the world on a flushcaloured field. Annan exe after to show they're not Laura Keown's.
Miss Dodpebble:
O, may the diabolo twisk your seifety pin!
Mrs Quickenough:
You child of Mammon, Kinsella's Lilith! Now, who has been tearing the leg of her drawars on her?
Miss Dodpebble:
Which leg is it?
Mrs Quickenough:
The one with the bells on it. Rinse them out and aston along with you! Where did I stop?
Miss Dodpebble:
Never stop. Continuarration! You're not there yet. I amstel waiting. Garonne, garonne!
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| Eugene Louis Boudin, Washerwomen by a river, c1885 |
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, after it was put in the Mericy Cordial Mendicants' Sitterdag-Zindeh-Munaday Wakeschrift (for once they sullied their white kid gloves, chewing cuds of their dinner of cheekin and beggin, with their show us it here and their mind out of that and their when you're quite finished with the reading matarial) even the snee that snowdon his hoaring hair had a skunner against him. Thaw, thaw, sava, savuto! Score Her Chuff Exsquire! Everywhere erriff you went and every bung you arver dropped into in cit or suburb or in addled areas, the Rose and Bottle or Phoenix Tavern or Power's Inn or Jude's Hotel, or wherever you scoured the countryside from Nannywater to Vartryville or from Porta Lateen to the lootin quarter you found his ikom etsched tipside down or the cornerboys cammocking his guy and Morris the Man, with the role of a royss in his turgos the turrible (Evropeahahn cheic house, unskimmed sooit and yahoort, hamman now cheekmee, Ahdahm this way make, Fatima, half turn!), reeling and railing around the local as the peihos piped and ubanjees twanged, with oddfellow's triple tiara busby rotundarinking round his scalp. Like Pate-by-the-Neva or Pete-over-Meer. This is the Hausman all paven and stoned, that cribbed the Cabin that never was owned, that cocked his leg and hennad his Egg. And the mauldrin rabble around him in areopage, fracassing a great bingkang cagnan with their timpan crowders. Mind your Grimmfather! Think of your Ma! Hing the Hong is his jove's hangnomen! Lilt a bolero, bulling a law! She swore on croststyx nyne wyndabouts she'd be level with all the snags of them yet. Par the Vulnerable Virgin's Mary del Dame! So she said to herself she'd frame a plan to fake a shine, the mischiefmaker, the like of it you niever heard.
Miss Dodpebble:
What plan? Tell me quick and dongu so crould! What the meurther did she mague?
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, she bergened a zak, a shammy mailsack, with the lend of a loan of the light of his lampion, off one of her swapsons, Shaun the Post, and then she went and consulted her chapboucqs, old Mot Moore, Casey's Euclid and the Fashion Display, and made herself tidal to join in the mascarete. O gig goggle of gigguels, I can't tell you how! It's too screaming to rizo, rabbit it all! Minneha, minnehi, minnehe, minneho!
Miss Dodpebble:
O, but you must, you must really! Make my hear it gurgle gurgle, like the farest gargle gargle, in the dusky dirgle dargle. By the twittering well of Mulhuddart I swear I'd pledge my chanza getting to heaven through Tirry and Killy's mount of impiety to hear it all, aviary word.
Mrs Quickenough:
O, leave me my faculties, woman, a while! If you don't like my story get out of the punt.
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, have it your own way so.
Mrs Quickenough:
Here, sit down and do as you're bid. Take my stroke and bend to your bow. Forward in and pull your overthepoise! Lisp it slaney and crisp it quiet. Deel me longsome. Tongue your time now. Breathe thet deep. Thouat's the fairway. Hurry slow and scheldt you go.
Miss Dodpebble:
Lynd us your blessed ashes here till I scrub the canon's underpants.
Mrs Quickenough:
Flow now. Ower more. And pooleypooley. First she let her hair fal and down it flussed to her feet its teviots winding coils. Then, mothernaked, she sampood herself with galawater and fraguant pistania mud, wupper and lauar, from crown to sole. Next she greased the groove of her keel, warthes and wears and mole and itcher, with antifouling butterscatch and turfentide and serpenthyme, and with leafmould she ushered round prunella isles and eslats dun, quincecunct, allover her little mary. Peeld gold of waxwork her jellybelly and her grains of incense anguille bronze. And after that she wove a garland for her hair. She pleated it. She plaited it. Of meadowgrass and riverflags, the bulrush and waterweed, and of fallen griefs of weeping willow. Then she made her bracelets and her anklets and her armlets and a jetty amulet for necklace of clicking cobbles and pattering pebbles and rumbledown rubble, richmond and rehr, of Irish rhunerhinestones and shellmarble bangles. That done, a dawk of smut to her airy eye, Annushka Lutetiavitch Pufflovah, and the lellipos cream to her lippeleens and the pick of the paintbox for her pommettes, from strawbirry reds to extray violates, and she sendred her boudeloire maids to His Affluence, Ciliegia Grande and Kirschie Real, the two chirrines, with respecks from his missus, seepy and sewery, and a request might she passe of him for a minnikin. A call to pay and light a taper, in Brie-on-Arrosa, back in a sprizzling. The cock striking mine, the stalls bridely sign, there's Zambosy waiting for me. She said she wouldn't be half her length away. Then, then, as soon as the lump his back was turned, with her mealiebag slang over her shulder, Anna Livia, oysterface, forth of her bassein came.
Miss Dodpebble:
Describe her! Hustle along, why can't you? Spitz on the iern while it's hot. I wouldn't miss her for irthing on nerthe. Not for the lucre of lomba strait! Oceans of Gaud, I mosel hear that! Ogowe presta! Leste, before Julia sees her! Ishekarry and washemeskad, the carishy caratimaney? Whole ladyfair? Duodecimoroon? Bonaventura? Malagassy? What had she on, the liddel oud oddity? How much did she scallop, harness and weights? Here she is, Amnisty Ann! Call her calamity electrifies man.
Mrs Quickenough:
No electress at all but old Moppa Necessity, angin mother of injons. I'll tell you a test. But you must sit still. Will you hold your peace and listen well to what I am going to say now? It might have been ten or twenty to one of the night of Allclose or the nexth of April when the flip of her hoogly igloo flappered and out toetippit a bushmam woman, the dearest little moma ever you saw, nodding around her, all smiles, with ems of embarras and aues to awe, between two ages, a judy queen not up to your elb. Quick, look at her cute and saise her quirk for the bicker she lives the slicker she grows.
Miss Dodpebble:
Save us and tagus! No more? Werra, where in ourthe did you ever pick a Lambay chop as big as a battering ram?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, you're right. I'm epte to forgetting, like Liviam Liddle did Loveme Long. The linth of my hough, I say! She wore a ploughboy's nailstudded clogs, a pair of ploughfields in themselves: a sugarloaf hat with a gaudyquiviry peak and a band of gorse for an arnoment and a hundred streamers dancing off it, all aflume, and a guildered pin to pierce it: owlglassy bicycles boggled her eyes: and a fishnetzeveil for the sun not to spoil the wrinklings of her hydeaspects: potatorings boucled the loose laubes of her laudesnarers: her nude cuba stockings were salmonspotspeckled: she sported a galligo shimmy of hazevaipar tinto that never was fast till it ran in the washing: stout stays, the rivals, lined her length: her bloodorange bockknickers, a two in one garment, showed natural nigger boggers, fancyfastened, free to undo: her blackstripe tan joseph was sequansewn and teddybearlined, with wavy rushgreen epaulettes and a leadown here and there of royal swansruff: a brace of gaspers stuck in her hayrope garters: her civvy codroy coat with alpheubett buttons was boundaried round with a twobar tunnel belt: a fourpenny bit in each pocketside weighed her safe from the blowaway windrush: she had a clothespeg tight astride on her joki's nose and she kept on grinding a sommething quaint in her fiumy mouth: and the rrreke of the fluve of the tail of the gawan of her snuffdrab siouler's skirt trailed ffiffty odd Irish miles behind her lungarhodes.
Miss Dodpebble:
Hellsbells, I'm sorry I missed her! Sweet gumptyum and nobody fainted. But in whelk of her mouths? Was her naze alight?
Mrs Quickenough:
Everyone that saw her said the dowce little delia looked a bit queer.
Miss Dodpebble:
Lotsy trotsy, mind the poddle! Missus, be good and don't fol in the say!
Mrs Quickenough:
Fenny poor hex she must have charred. Kickhams a frumpier ever you saw. Making mush mullet's eyes at her boys dobelon. And they crowned her their chariton queen, all the maids.
Miss Dodpebble:
Of the may? You don't say!
Mrs Quickenough:
Well for her she couldn't see herself. I recknitz wharfore the darling murrayed her mirror.
Miss Dodpebble:
She did? Mersey me!
Mrs Quickenough:
There was a koros of drouthdropping surfacemen, boomslanging and plugchewing, fruiteyeing and flowerfeeding, in contemplation of the fluctuation and the undification of her filimentation, lolling and leasing on North Lazers' Waal all eelfare week by the Jukar Yoick's and as soon as they saw her meander by that marritime way in her grasswinter's weeds and twigged who was under her archdeaconess's bonnet, Avondale's fish and Clarence's poison, wheezes an to anaber, Wit-upon-Crutches to Master Bates: Between our two southsates and the granite they're warming, either her face has been lifted or Alp has doped.
Miss Dodpebble:
But what was the game in her mixed baggyrhatty? Just the tembo in her tumbo or pilipili from her pepperpot? Saas and taas and specis bizaas. And where in thunder did she plunder? Fore the battle or efter the ball? I want to get it frisk from the soorce. I aubette my bearb it's worth while poaching on. Shake it up, do! do! That’s a good old son of a ditch! Raddle-me-rurally the restigouche. I promise I’ll make it wentworthe your while. and I don’t mean maybe. Not yet with a goodfor. Spey me pruth and I’ll tale you true.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, arundgirond in a waveney lyne aringarouma she pattered and swung and sidled, dribbling her boulder through narrowa mosses, the diliskydrear on our drier side and the vildevetchvine agin us, curara here, careero there, not knowing which medway or wheser to strike it, edereider, making chattahoochee all to her ain chichui, like Santa Claus at the cree of the pale and puny, nistling to hear for their tiny hearties, her arms encircling Isolabella, then running with reconciled Romas and Reims, then bathing Dirty Hans' spatters with spittle, on like a lech to be off like a dart, with a Christmas box apiece for aisch and iveryone of her childer, the birthday gifts they dreamt they gave her, the spoiled she fleetly laid at our door. On the matt, by the pourch and inunder the cellar. The rivulets ran aflod to see, the glashaboys, the pollynooties. Out of the paunschaup on to the pyre. And they all about her, juvenile leads and ingenuinas, from the slime of their slums and artesaned wellings, rickets and riots, like the Smyly boys at their vicereine's levee, chipping her and raising a bit of a chir or a ary, Vivi vienne, little Annchen! Vielo Anno, high life! Sing us a sula, O Susuria! Ausone sidulcis! Hasn't she tambre!, every dive she'd neb in her culdee sacco of wabbash she raabed and reach out her maundy meerschaundize, poor souvenir as per ricorder and all for sore aringarung, stinkers and heelers, laggards and primelads, her furzeborn sons and dribblederry daughters, a thousand and one of them, and wickerpotluck for each of them. For evil and ever. And kiks the buch. A tinker's bann and a barrow to boil his billy for Gipsy Lee: a cartridge of cockaleekie soup for Chummy the Guardsman: for sulky Pender's acid nephew deltoid drops, curiously strong: a cough and a rattle and wildrose cheeks for poor Piccolina Petite MacFarlane: a jigsaw puzzle of needles and pins and blankets and shins between them for Isabel, Jezebel and Llewelyn Mmarriage: a brazen nose and pigiron mittens for Johnny Walker Beg: a papar flag of the saints and stripes for Kevineen O'Dea: a puffpuff for Pudge Craig and a nightmarching hare for Techertim Tombigby: waterleg and gumboots each for Bully Hayes and Hurricane Hartigan: a prodigal heart and fatted calves for Buck Jones, the pride of Clonliffe: a loaf of bread and a father's early aim for Val from Skibereen: a jauntingcar for Larry Doolin, the Ballyclee jackeen: a seasick trip on a government ship for Teague O'Flanagan: a louse and trap for Jerry Coyle: slushmincepies for Andy Mackenzie: a hairclip and clackdish for Penceless Peter: that twelve sounds look for G. V. Brooke: a drowned doll to face downwards for modest Sister Anne Mortimer: altar falls for Blanchisse's bed: Wildairs' breechettes for Magpeg Woppington: for Sue Dot a big eye, for Sam Dash a false step: snakes in clover, picked and scotched, and a vaticanned vipercatcher's visa for Patsy Presbys: a reiz every morning for Standfast Dick and a drop every minute for Stumblestone Davy: scruboak beads for beatified Biddy: two appletweed stools for Eva Mobbely: for Saara Philpot a jordan vale tearorne: a pretty box of Pettyfib's Powder for Eileen Aruna to whiten her teeth and outflash Helen Arhone: a whipping top for Eddy Lawless: for Kitty Coleraine of Butterman's Lane a penny wise for her foolish pitcher: a putty shovel for Terry the Puckaun: an apotamus mask for Promoter Dunne: a niester egg with a twicedated shell and a dynamight right for Pavl the Curate: a collera morbous for Mann in the Cloack: a starr and girton for Draper and Deane: for Will-of-the-Wisp and Barny-the-Bark two mangolds noble to sweeden their bitters: for Oliver Bound a way in his frey: for Seumas, thought little, a crown he feels big: a tibertine's pile with a Congoswood cross on the back for Sunny Twimjim: a praises be and spare me days for Brian the Bravo: penteplenty of pity with lubilashings of lust for Olona Lena Magdalena: for Camilla, Dromilla, Ludmilla, Mamilla, a bucket, a packet, a book and a pillow: for Nancy Shannon a Tuami brooch: for Dora Riparia Hopeandwater a cooling douche and a warmingpan: a pair of Blarney braggs for Wally Meagher: a hairpin slatepencil for Elsie Oram to scratch her toby, doing her best with her volgar fractions: an old age pension for Betty Bellezza: a bag of the blues for Funny Fitz: a Missa pro Messa for Taff de Taff: Jill, the spoon of a girl, for Jack, the broth of a boy: a Rogerson Crusoe's Friday fast for Caducus Angelus Rubiconstein: three hundred and sixtysix poplin tyne for revery warp in the weaver's woof for Victor Hugoknot: a stiff steaded rake and good varians muck for Kate theCleaner: a hole in the ballad for Hosty: two dozen of cradles for J. F. X. P. Coppinger: tenpounten on the pop for the daulphins born with five spoiled squibs for Infanta: a letter to last a lifetime for Maggi beyond by the ashpit: the heftiest frozenmeat woman from Lusk to Livienbad for Felim the Ferry: spas and speranza and symposum's syrup for decayed and blind and gouty Gough: a change of naves and joys of ills for Armoricus Tristram Amoor Saint Lawrence: a guillotine shirt for Reuben Redbreast und hempen suspendeats for Brennan on the Moor: an oakanknee for Conditor Sawyer and musquodoboits for Great Tropical Scott: a peduncle for Karmalite Kane: a sunless map of the month, including the sword and stamps for Shemus O'Shaun the Post: a jackal with hide for Browne but Nolan: a stonecold shoulder for Donn Joe Vance: all lock and no stable for Honorbright Merreytrickx: a big drum for Billy Dunboyne: a guiltygoldeny bellows, below me blow me, for Ida Ida and a Hushaby rocker, Elletrouvetout for Who-is-silvier — Where-is-he?: whatever you like to swilly to swash, Yuinness or Yennessy, Laagen or Niger, for Festus King and Roaring Peter and Frisky Shorty and Treacle Tom and O. B. Behan and Sully the Thug and Master Magrath and Peter Cloran and O'Delawarr Rossa and Nerone MacPacem and whoever you chance to meet knocking around: and a pig's bladder balloon for Selina Susquehanna Stakelum.
Miss Dodpebble:
But what did she give to Pruda Ward and Katty Kanel and Peggy Quilty and Briery Brosna and Teasy Kieran and Ena Lappin and Muriel Maassy and Zusan Camac and Melissa Brandogue and Flora Ferns and Fauna Fox-Goodman and Grettna Greaney and Penelope Inglesante and Lezba Licking like Leytha Liane and Roxana Rohan with Simpatica Sohan and Una Bina Laterza and Trina La Mesme and Philomena O'Farrell and Irmak Elly and Josephine Foyle and Snakeshead Lily and Fountainoy Laura and Marie Xavier Agnes Daisy Frances de Sales Macleay?
Mrs Quickenough:
She gave them ilcka madre's daughter a moonflower and a bloodvein: but the grapes that ripe before reason to them that divide the vinedress. So on Izzy, her shamemaid, love shone befond her tears as from Shem, her penmight, life past befoul his prime.
Miss Dodpebble:
My colonial, wardha bagful! A bakereen's dusind with a tithe of tillies to boot. That's what you may call a tale of a tub. And Hibernonian market too. All that and more under one crinoline envelope if you dare to break the porkbarrel seal. No wonder they'd run from her pison plague.
Mrs Quickenough
Throw us your hudson soap for the honour of Clane! The wee taste the water left. I'll raft it back first thing in the marne. Merced mulde!
Miss Dodpebble:
Ay, and don't forget the reckitts I lohaned you.
Throw us your hudson soap for the honour of Clane! The wee taste the water left. I'll raft it back first thing in the marne. Merced mulde!
Miss Dodpebble:
Ay, and don't forget the reckitts I lohaned you.
Mrs Quickenough:
You've all the swirls your side of the current.
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, am I to blame for that if I have?
Mrs Quickenough:
Who said you're to blame for that if you have? You're a bit on the sharp side.
Miss Dodpebble:
I’m on the wide. Only snuffers' cornets drifts my way that the cracka dvine chucks out of his cassock, with her estheryear's marsh narcissus to make him recant his vanitty fair. Foul strips of his Chinook's bible I do be reading, dodwell disgustered but chickled with chuckles at the tittles is drawn on the tattlepage. Senior ga dito: Faciasi Omo! E Omo fu fò. Ho! Ho! Senior ga dito: Faciasi Hidamo! Hidamo se ga facessà. Ha! Ha! And Die Windermere Dichter and Lefanu (Sheridan's) Old House by the Coachyard and Mill (J.) On Woman with Ditto on the Floss. Ja, a swamp for Altmuehler and a stone for his flossies! I know how racy they move his wheel.
Mrs Quickenough:
My hands are blawcauld between isker and suda like that piece of pattern chayney there, lying below. Or where is it? Lying beside the sedge I saw it. Hoangho, my sorrow, I've lost it! Aimihi! With that turbary water who could see? So near and yet so far!
Miss Dodpebble:
But O, gihon! I lovat a gabber. I could listen to maure and moravar again. Regn onder river. Flies do your float. Thick is the life for mere.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, you know or don't you kennet or haven't I told you every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it. Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are taking root.
Miss Dodpebble:
And my cold cher's gone ashley. Fieluhr?
Mrs Quickenough:
Filou!
Miss Dodpebble:
What age is at?
Mrs Quickenough
It saon is late. 'Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouse's clogh. They took it asunder, I hurd thum sigh. When will they reassemble it? O, my back, my back, my bach! I'd want to go to Aches-les-Pains.
Miss Dodpebble;
Pingpong! There's the Belle for Sexaloiter! And Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew! Godavari, vert the showers! And grant Thaya grace! Aman. Will we spread them here now?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, we will. Flip! Spread on your bank and I'll spread mine on mine. Flep!
Miss Dodpebble:
It's what I'm doing.
Mrs Quickenough;
Spread! It's churning chill. Der went is rising. I'll lay a few stones on the hostel sheets. A man and his bride embraced between them. Else I'd have sprinkled and folded them only.
Miss Dodpebble:
And I'll tie my butcher's apron here. It's suety yet. The strollers will pass it by. Six shifts, ten kerchiefs, nine to hold to the fire and this for the code, the convent napkins, twelve, one baby's shawl. Goodmother Jossiph knows, she said.
Mrs Quickenough:
Whose head?
Miss Dodpebble:
Mutter snores?
Mrs Quickenough:
Deataceas!
Miss Dodpebble:
Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allalluvial!
Mrs Quickenough:
Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger. I've heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons was married into a family in Spain. And all the Dunders de Dunnes in Markland's Vineland beyond Brendan's herring pool takes number nine in yangsee's hats. And one of Biddy's beads went bobbing lonesome till she rounded up lost histereve with a marigold and a cobbler's candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries off Bachelor's Walk. But all that's left to the last of the Meaghers in the loup of the years prefixed and between is one kneebuckle and two hooks in the front.
Miss Dodpebble:
Do you tell me that now?
Mrs Quickenough:
I do, in troth.
Miss Dodpebble:
Orara por Orbe and poor Las Animas! Ussa, ulla, we're umbas all!
Mrs Quickenough:
Mezha, didn't you hear it a deluge of times, ufer and ufer, respund to spond? You deed, you deed!
Miss Dodpebble:
I need, I need! It's that irrawaddyng I've stoke in my aars. It all but husheth the lethest zswound. Oronoko!
Mrs Quickenough:
What's your trouble?
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that the great Finnleader himself in his joakimono on his statue riding the high horse there forehengist? Father of Otters, it is himself! Yonne there?
Mrs Quickenough:
Isset that? On Fallareen Common? You're thinking of Astley's Amphitheayter where the bobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers. Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper. It's well I know your sort of slop. Flap! Ireland sober is Ireland stiff. Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!
Miss Dodpebble:
Your prayers. I sonht zo! Madammangut! Were you lifting your elbow, tell us, glazy cheeks, in Conway's Carrigacurra canteen?
Mrs Quickenough:
Was I what, hobbledyhips? Flop!
Miss Dodpebble:
Your rere gait's creakorheuman bitts your butts disagrees.
Mrs Quickenough:
Amn't I up since the damp dawn, marthared mary allacook, with Corrigan's pulse and vericoarse veins, my pramaxle smashed, Alice Jane in decline and my oneeyed mongrel twice run over, soaking and bleaching boiler rags, and sweating cold, a widow like me, for to deck my tennis champion son, the laundryman with the lavandier flannels?
Miss Dodpebble:
You won your limpopo limp from the husky hussars when Collar and Cuffs was heir to the town and your slur gave the stink to Carlow. Holy Scamander! I sar it again! Near the golden falls. Icis on us! Seints of light! Zezere!
Mrs Quickenough:
Subdue your noise, you hamble creature! What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyergray ass them four old codgers owns.
Miss Dodpebble:
Are you meanam Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory?
Mrs Quickenough:
I meyne now, thank all, the four of them, and the roar of them, that draves that stray in the mist and old Johnny MacDougal along with them.
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that the Poolbeg flasher beyant, pharphar, or a fireboat coasting nyar the Kishtna or a glow I behold within a hedge or my Garry come back from the Indes?
Mrs Quickenough:
Wait till the honeying of the lune, love! Die, eve, little eve, die! We see that wonder in your eye. We'll meet again, we'll part once more.
You've all the swirls your side of the current.
Miss Dodpebble:
Well, am I to blame for that if I have?
Mrs Quickenough:
Who said you're to blame for that if you have? You're a bit on the sharp side.
Miss Dodpebble:
I’m on the wide. Only snuffers' cornets drifts my way that the cracka dvine chucks out of his cassock, with her estheryear's marsh narcissus to make him recant his vanitty fair. Foul strips of his Chinook's bible I do be reading, dodwell disgustered but chickled with chuckles at the tittles is drawn on the tattlepage. Senior ga dito: Faciasi Omo! E Omo fu fò. Ho! Ho! Senior ga dito: Faciasi Hidamo! Hidamo se ga facessà. Ha! Ha! And Die Windermere Dichter and Lefanu (Sheridan's) Old House by the Coachyard and Mill (J.) On Woman with Ditto on the Floss. Ja, a swamp for Altmuehler and a stone for his flossies! I know how racy they move his wheel.
Mrs Quickenough:
My hands are blawcauld between isker and suda like that piece of pattern chayney there, lying below. Or where is it? Lying beside the sedge I saw it. Hoangho, my sorrow, I've lost it! Aimihi! With that turbary water who could see? So near and yet so far!
Miss Dodpebble:
But O, gihon! I lovat a gabber. I could listen to maure and moravar again. Regn onder river. Flies do your float. Thick is the life for mere.
Mrs Quickenough:
Well, you know or don't you kennet or haven't I told you every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it. Look, look, the dusk is growing. My branches lofty are taking root.
Miss Dodpebble:
And my cold cher's gone ashley. Fieluhr?
Mrs Quickenough:
Filou!
Miss Dodpebble:
What age is at?
Mrs Quickenough
It saon is late. 'Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouse's clogh. They took it asunder, I hurd thum sigh. When will they reassemble it? O, my back, my back, my bach! I'd want to go to Aches-les-Pains.
Miss Dodpebble;
Pingpong! There's the Belle for Sexaloiter! And Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew! Godavari, vert the showers! And grant Thaya grace! Aman. Will we spread them here now?
Mrs Quickenough:
Ay, we will. Flip! Spread on your bank and I'll spread mine on mine. Flep!
Miss Dodpebble:
It's what I'm doing.
Mrs Quickenough;
Spread! It's churning chill. Der went is rising. I'll lay a few stones on the hostel sheets. A man and his bride embraced between them. Else I'd have sprinkled and folded them only.
Miss Dodpebble:
And I'll tie my butcher's apron here. It's suety yet. The strollers will pass it by. Six shifts, ten kerchiefs, nine to hold to the fire and this for the code, the convent napkins, twelve, one baby's shawl. Goodmother Jossiph knows, she said.
Mrs Quickenough:
Whose head?
Miss Dodpebble:
Mutter snores?
Mrs Quickenough:
Deataceas!
Miss Dodpebble:
Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allalluvial!
Mrs Quickenough:
Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger. I've heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons was married into a family in Spain. And all the Dunders de Dunnes in Markland's Vineland beyond Brendan's herring pool takes number nine in yangsee's hats. And one of Biddy's beads went bobbing lonesome till she rounded up lost histereve with a marigold and a cobbler's candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries off Bachelor's Walk. But all that's left to the last of the Meaghers in the loup of the years prefixed and between is one kneebuckle and two hooks in the front.
Miss Dodpebble:
Do you tell me that now?
Mrs Quickenough:
I do, in troth.
Miss Dodpebble:
Orara por Orbe and poor Las Animas! Ussa, ulla, we're umbas all!
Mrs Quickenough:
Mezha, didn't you hear it a deluge of times, ufer and ufer, respund to spond? You deed, you deed!
Miss Dodpebble:
I need, I need! It's that irrawaddyng I've stoke in my aars. It all but husheth the lethest zswound. Oronoko!
Mrs Quickenough:
What's your trouble?
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that the great Finnleader himself in his joakimono on his statue riding the high horse there forehengist? Father of Otters, it is himself! Yonne there?
Mrs Quickenough:
Isset that? On Fallareen Common? You're thinking of Astley's Amphitheayter where the bobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers. Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper. It's well I know your sort of slop. Flap! Ireland sober is Ireland stiff. Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!
Miss Dodpebble:
Your prayers. I sonht zo! Madammangut! Were you lifting your elbow, tell us, glazy cheeks, in Conway's Carrigacurra canteen?
Mrs Quickenough:
Was I what, hobbledyhips? Flop!
Miss Dodpebble:
Your rere gait's creakorheuman bitts your butts disagrees.
Mrs Quickenough:
Amn't I up since the damp dawn, marthared mary allacook, with Corrigan's pulse and vericoarse veins, my pramaxle smashed, Alice Jane in decline and my oneeyed mongrel twice run over, soaking and bleaching boiler rags, and sweating cold, a widow like me, for to deck my tennis champion son, the laundryman with the lavandier flannels?
Miss Dodpebble:
You won your limpopo limp from the husky hussars when Collar and Cuffs was heir to the town and your slur gave the stink to Carlow. Holy Scamander! I sar it again! Near the golden falls. Icis on us! Seints of light! Zezere!
Mrs Quickenough:
Subdue your noise, you hamble creature! What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyergray ass them four old codgers owns.
Miss Dodpebble:
Are you meanam Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory?
Mrs Quickenough:
I meyne now, thank all, the four of them, and the roar of them, that draves that stray in the mist and old Johnny MacDougal along with them.
Miss Dodpebble:
Is that the Poolbeg flasher beyant, pharphar, or a fireboat coasting nyar the Kishtna or a glow I behold within a hedge or my Garry come back from the Indes?
Mrs Quickenough:
Wait till the honeying of the lune, love! Die, eve, little eve, die! We see that wonder in your eye. We'll meet again, we'll part once more.
Miss Dodpebble:
The spot I'll seek if the hour you'll find. My chart shines high where the blue milk's upset. Forgivemequick, I'm going! Bubye! And you, pluck your watch, forgetmenot. Your evenlode. So save to jurna's end!
Mrs Quickenough:
My sights are swimming thicker on me by the shadows to this place. I sow home slowly now by own way, moyvalley way.
Miss Dodpebble:
Towy I too, rathmine.
Mrs Quickenough:
Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinklytoes! And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and fotthergills! Gammer and gaffer, we're all their gangsters. Hadn't he seven dams to wive him? And every dam had her seven crutches. And every crutch had its seven hues. And each hue had a differing cry. Sudds for me and supper for you and the doctor's bill for Joe John.
Miss Dodpebble:
Befor!
Mrs Quickenough:
Bifur! He married his markets, cheap by foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their pinky limony creamy birnies and their turkiss indienne mauves.
Miss Dodpebble:
But at milkidmass who was the spouse?
Mrs Quickenough:
Then all that was was fair. Tys Elvenland! Teems of times and happy returns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be. Northmen's thing made southfolk's place but howmulty plurators made eachone in person? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan. Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho!
Miss Dodpebble:
Hey?
Mrs Quickenough:
What all men.
Miss Dodpebble:
Hot?
Mrs Quickenough:
His tittering daughters of.
Miss Dodpebble:
Whawk? Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho!
Mrs Quickenough:
Are you not gone ahome?
Miss Dodpebble:
What Thom Malone? Can't hear with bawk of bats, all this liffeying waters of.
Mrs Quickenough:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm.
Miss Dodpebble:
A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons.
Mrs Quickenough:
Dark hawks hear us!
Miss Dodpebble:
Night!
Mrs Quickenough:
Night!
Miss Dodpebble;
My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Mrs Quickenough:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Miss Dodpebble:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Mrs Quickenough:
Night now!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Mrs Quickenough:
Night night!
Miss Dodpebble:
Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.
Mrs Quickenough:
Night!
Miss Dodpebble:
Towy I too, rathmine.
Mrs Quickenough:
Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinklytoes! And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and fotthergills! Gammer and gaffer, we're all their gangsters. Hadn't he seven dams to wive him? And every dam had her seven crutches. And every crutch had its seven hues. And each hue had a differing cry. Sudds for me and supper for you and the doctor's bill for Joe John.
Miss Dodpebble:
Befor!
Mrs Quickenough:
Bifur! He married his markets, cheap by foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their pinky limony creamy birnies and their turkiss indienne mauves.
Miss Dodpebble:
But at milkidmass who was the spouse?
Mrs Quickenough:
Then all that was was fair. Tys Elvenland! Teems of times and happy returns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be. Northmen's thing made southfolk's place but howmulty plurators made eachone in person? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan. Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho!
Miss Dodpebble:
Hey?
Mrs Quickenough:
What all men.
Miss Dodpebble:
Hot?
Mrs Quickenough:
His tittering daughters of.
Miss Dodpebble:
Whawk? Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho!
Mrs Quickenough:
Are you not gone ahome?
Miss Dodpebble:
What Thom Malone? Can't hear with bawk of bats, all this liffeying waters of.
Mrs Quickenough:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm.
Miss Dodpebble:
A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons.
Mrs Quickenough:
Dark hawks hear us!
Miss Dodpebble:
Night!
Mrs Quickenough:
Night!
Miss Dodpebble;
My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Mrs Quickenough:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Miss Dodpebble:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Mrs Quickenough:
Night now!
Miss Dodpebble:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Mrs Quickenough:
Night night!
Miss Dodpebble:
Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of.
Mrs Quickenough:
Night!
OTHER VERSIONS OF THE ENDING
Siobhan McKenna was the first reader to use two different voices for the washerwomen, an old and a young one, in this 1959 Caedmon recording, directed by the playwright Howard Sackler. Her performance influenced the later recordings, made in 1998 and 2021 by Marcella Riordan. Yet all three recordings assign the voices at the end slightly differently.
Here's how McKenna reads the final passage:
Old voice:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos.
Young voice:
I feel as old as yonder elm.
Old:
A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us!
Young:
Night!
Old:
Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Old:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Young:
Night now!
Old:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Young:
Night
Old:
night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
Here's Marcella Riordan's 1998 abridged recording, which is on audible, strongly influenced by McKenna:
Old:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us!
Young:
Night!
Old:
Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun?
Old:
Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Young:
Night now!
Old:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Young:
Night
Old:
night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
In 2021, Riordan made a wonderful complete recording of the chapter, which is also on audible. Here she reassigns the final line to the younger voice:
Old:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons.
Young:
Dark hawks hear us! Night? Night!
Old:
My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Old:
Night now!
Young:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Old:
Night night!
Young:
Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
Old:
Ho, talk save us! My foos woon't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons.
Young:
Dark hawks hear us! Night? Night!
Old:
My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Young:
Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of?
Old:
Night now!
Young:
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Old:
Night night!
Young:
Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
