This Treacle Tom to whom reference has been made had been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts in the land of counties capalleens for some time previous to that (he was, in fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where he slept in a nude state, hailfellow with meth, in strange men’s cots) but on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny, Eglandine’s choicest herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galopping Primrose, Brigid Brewster’s, the Cock, the Postboy’s Horn, [p.040] the Little Old Man’s and All Swell That Aimswell, the Cup and the Stirrup, he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a housingroom Abide With Oneanother at Block W.W., (why didn’t he back it?) Pump Court, The Liberties, and, what with moltapuke on voltapuke, resnored alcoh alcoho alcoherently to the burden of I come, my horse delayed, nom num, the substance of the tale of the evangelical bussybozzy and the rusinurbean (the ‘girls’ he would keep calling them for the collarette and skirt, the sunbonnet and carnation) in parts (it seemed he was before the eyots of martas or otherwales the thirds of fossilyears, he having beham with katya when lavinias had her mens lease to sea in a psumpship doodly show whereat he was looking for fight niggers with whilde roarses) oft in the chilly night (the metagonistic! the epickthalamorous!) during uneasy slumber in their hearings of a small and stonybroke cashdraper’s executive, Peter Cloran (discharged), O’Mara, an exprivate secretary of no fixed abode (locally known as Mildew Lisa), who had passed several nights, funnish enough, in a doorway under the blankets of homelessness on the bunk of iceland, pillowed upon the stone of destiny colder than man’s knee or woman’s breast, and Hosty, (no slouch of a name), an illstarred beachbusker, who, sans rootie and sans scrapie, suspicioning as how he was setting on a twoodstool on the verge of selfabyss, most starved, with melancholia over everything in general, (night birman, you served him with natigal’s nano!) had been towhead tossing on his shakedown, devising ways and manners of means, of what he loved to ifidalicence somehow or other in the nation getting a hold of some chap’s parabellum in the hope of taking a wing sociable and lighting upon a sidewheel dive somewhere off the Dullkey Downlairy and Bleakrooky tramaline where he could throw true and go and blow the sibicidal napper off himself for two bits to boldywell baltitude in the peace and quitybus of a one sure shot bottle, he after having being trying all he knew with the lady’s help of Madam Gristle for upwards of eighteen calanders to get out of Sir Patrick Dun’s, through Sir Humphrey Jervis’s and into the Saint Kevin’s bed in the Adelaide’s hosspittles (from [p.041] these incurable welleslays among those uncarable wellasdays through Sant Iago by his cocklehat, good Lazar, deliver us!) without after having been able to jerrywangle it anysides. Lisa O’Deavis and Roche Mongan (who had so much incommon, epipsychidically; if the phrase be permitted hostis et odor insuper petroperfractus) as an understood thing slept their sleep of the swimborne in the one sweet undulant mother of tumblerbunks with Hosty just how the shavers in the shaw the yokels in the yoats or, well, the wasters in the wilde, and the bustling tweeny-dawn-of-all-works (meed of anthems here we pant!) had not been many jiffies furbishing potlids, doorbrasses, scholars’ applecheeks and linkboy’s metals when, ashhopperminded like no fella he go make bakenbeggfuss longa white man, the rejuvenated busker (for after a goodnight’s rave and rumble and a shinkhams topmorning with his coexes he was not the same man) and his broadawake bedroom suite (our boys, as our Byron called them) were up and ashuffle from the hogshome they lovenaned The Barrel, cross Ebblinn’s chilled hamlet (thrie routes and restings on their then superficies curiously correspondant with those linea and puncta where our tubenny habenny metro maniplumbs below the oberflake underrails and stations at this time of riding) to the thrummings of a crewth fiddle which, cremoaning and cronauning, levey grevey, witty and wevey, appy, leppy and playable, caressed the ears of the subjects of King Saint Finnerty the Festive who, in brick homes of their own and in their flavory fraiseberry beds, heeding hardly cry of honeyman, soed lavender or foyneboyne salmon alive, with their priggish mouths all open for the larger appraisiation of this longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios, were only halfpast atsweeeep and after a brisk pause at a pawnbroking establishment for the prothetic purpose of redeeming the songster’s truly admirable false teeth and a prolonged visit to a house of call at Cujas Place, fizz, the Old Sots’ Hole in the parish of Saint Cecily within the liberty of Ceolmore not a thousand or one national leagues, that was, by Griffith’s valuation, from the site of the statue of Primewer Glasstone setting a match to the march of a maker (last of the stewards peut-être), where, the tale rambles [p.042] along, the trio of whackfolthediddlers was joined by a further— intentions—apply—tomorrow casual and a decent sort of the hadbeen variety who had just been touching the weekly insult, phewit, and all figblabbers (who saith of noun?) had stimulants in the shape of gee and gees stood by the damn decent sort after which stag luncheon and a few ones more just to celebrate yesterday, flushed with their firestufffostered friendship, the rascals came out of the licensed premises, (Browne’s first, the small p.s. ex-ex-executive capahand in their sad rear like a lady’s postscript: I want money. Pleasend), wiping their laughleaking lipes on their sleeves, how the bouckaleens shout their roscan generally (seinn fion, seinn fion’s araun.) and the rhymers’ world was with reason the richer for a wouldbe ballad, to the balledder of which the world of cumannity singing owes a tribute for having placed on the planet’s melomap his lay of the vilest bogeyer but most attractionable avatar the world has ever had to explain for.
This, more krectly lubeen or fellow—me—lieder was first poured forth where Riau Liviau riots and col de Houdo humps, under the shadow of the monument of the shouldhavebeen legislator (Eleutheriodendron! Spare, woodmann, spare!) to an overflow meeting of all the nations in Lenster fullyfilling the visional area and, as a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative, what with masks, whet with faces, of all sections and cross sections (wineshop and cocoahouse poured out to brim up the broaching) of our liffeyside people (to omit to mention of the mainland minority and such as had wayfared via Watling, Ernin, Icknild and Stane, in chief a halted cockney car with its quotal of Hardmuth’s hacks, a northern tory, a southern whig, an eastanglian chronicler and a landwester guardian) ranging from slips of young dublinos from Cutpurse Row having nothing better to do than walk about with their hands in their kneepants, sucking airwhackers, weedulicet, jumbobricks, side by side with truant officers, three woollen balls and poplin in search of a croust of pawn to busy professional gentlemen, a brace of palesmen with dundrearies, nooning toward Daly’s, fresh from snipehitting and mallardmissing on Rutland heath, exchanging cold sneers, mass- [p.043] going ladies from Hume Street in their chairs, the bearers baited, some wandering hamalags out of the adjacent cloverfields of Mosse’s Gardens, an oblate fater from Skinner’s Alley, bricklayers, a fleming, in tabinet fumant, with spouse and dog, an aged hammersmith who had some chisellers by the hand, a bout of cudgel players, not a few sheep with the braxy, two bluecoat scholars, four broke gents out of Simpson’s on the Rocks, a portly and a pert still tassing Turkey Coffee and orange shrub in tickeyes door, Peter Pim and Paul Fry and then Elliot and, O, Atkinson, suffering hell’s delights from the blains of their annuitant’s acorns not forgetting a deuce of dianas ridy for the hunt, a particularist prebendary pondering on the roman easter, the tonsure question and greek uniates, plunk em, a lace lappet head or two or three or four from a window, and so on down to a few good old souls, who, as they were juiced after taking their pledge over at the unkle’s place, were evidently under the spell of liquor, from the wake of Tarry the Tailor a fair girl, a jolly postboy thinking off three flagons and one, a plumodrole, a half sir from the weaver’s almshouse who clings and clings and chatchatchat clings to her, a wholedam’s cloudhued pittycoat, as child, as curiolater, as Caoch O’Leary. The wararrow went round, so it did, (a nation wants a gaze) and the ballad, in the felibrine trancoped metre affectioned by Taiocebo in his Casudas de Poulichinello Artahut, stumpstampaded on to a slip of blancovide and headed by an excessively rough and red woodcut, privately printed at the rimepress of Delville, soon fluttered its secret on white highway and brown byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village, through the five pussyfours green of the united states of Scotia Picta—and he who denies it, may his hairs be rubbed in dirt! To the added strains (so peacifold) of his majesty the floote, that onecrooned king of inscrewments, Piggots’s purest, ciello alsoliuto, which Mr Delaney (Mr Delacey?), horn, anticipating a perfect downpour of plaudits among the rapsods, piped out of his
