No More Learning

O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the
puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of
that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient
city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after
due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn
counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into
honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.

--It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal
Sassenachs and their _patois. _

So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till
you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your
blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach
a nation, and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and
their colonies and their civilisation.

--Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with
them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody
thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature
worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us.
Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts.

--The European family, says J. J. . . .

--They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin
Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language
anywhere in Europe except in a _cabinet d'aisance. _

And says John Wyse:

--Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:

--_Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion! _

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the
medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan _Lamh
Dearg Abu_, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty
valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster
silent as the deathless gods.

--What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had
lost a bob and found a tanner.

--Gold cup, says he.

--Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.

_--Throwaway,_ says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest
nowhere.

--And Bass's mare? says Terry.

--Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid
on my tip _Sceptre_ for himself and a lady friend.

--I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on _Zinfandel_ that Mr Flynn
gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's.

--Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. _Throwaway,_
says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name
is _Sceptre. _

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was
anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his
luck with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.

--Not there, my child, says he.

--Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the
other dog.

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom
sticking in an odd word.

--Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they
can't see the beam in their own.

--_Raimeis_, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow
that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing
twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost
tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world!
And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax
and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our
tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our
Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk
and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent
in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the
Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar
now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to
sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even
Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from
Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish
hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for
the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe
us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the
Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and
bog to make us all die of consumption?

--As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland
with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land.
Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was
reading a report of lord Castletown's. . .

--Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain
elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the
trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of
Eire, O.

--Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.

The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon
at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief
ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine
Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash,
Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde
Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia
Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs
Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss
Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel
Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall,
Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana
Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis
graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given away by
her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in
a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip
of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with
a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by
bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss
Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very
becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty _motif_ of plume rose being
worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the
jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral.
Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability
and, in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played
a new and striking arrangement of _Woodman, spare that tree_ at the
conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre _in
Horto_ after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a
playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow,
ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs
Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.

--And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with
Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were
pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.

--And will again, says Joe.

--And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the
citizen, clapping his thigh, our harbours that are empty will be full
again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom
of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with
a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the
O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with
the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the
first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to
the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat,
the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue
field, the three sons of Milesius.

And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like
a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody
life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled
multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly
Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the
holding of an evicted tenant.

--Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?

--An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.

--Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you
asleep?

--Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.

Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of
attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to
crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head
down like a bull at a gate. And another one: _Black Beast Burned in
Omaha, Ga_. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a
Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under
him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and
crucify him to make sure of their job.

--But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at
bay?

--I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is.
Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on
the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself
_Disgusted One_.

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew
of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the
parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad
brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of
a gun.

--A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John
Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on
the breech.

And says John Wyse:

--'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane
and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad
till he yells meila murder.

--That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the
earth.

The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber
on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen
gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about
of drudges and whipped serfs.

--On which the sun never rises, says Joe.

--And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The
unfortunate yahoos believe it.

They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth,
and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast,
born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified,
flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose
again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till
further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid.

--But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't
it be the same here if you put force against force?

Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his
last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living.

--We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater
Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the
black 47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid
low by the batteringram and the _Times_ rubbed its hands and told the
whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as
redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the
Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full
of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay,
they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in
the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember
the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no
cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.

--Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was. . .

--We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the
poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at
Killala.

--Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us
against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the
broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the
wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan
in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria
Teresa. But what did we ever get for it?

--The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know
what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they
trying to make an _Entente cordiale_ now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with
perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were.

--_Conspuez les Francais_, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer.

--And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we
had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the
elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead?

Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one
with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of
God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting
her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the
whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about _Ehren on the Rhine_
and come where the boose is cheaper.

--Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now.

--Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox
than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin!

--And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests
and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic
Majesty's racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his
jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less.

--They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little
Alf.

And says J. J. :

--Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision.

--Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.

--Yes, sir, says he. I will.

--You? says Joe.

--Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less.

--Repeat that dose, says Joe.

Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with
his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.

--Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it.
Perpetuating national hatred among nations.

--But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.

--Yes, says Bloom.

--What is it? says John Wyse.

--A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same
place.

--By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm
living in the same place for the past five years.

So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck
out of it:

--Or also living in different places.

--That covers my case, says Joe.

--What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.

--Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and,
gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.

--After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to
swab himself dry.

--Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and
repeat after me the following words.

The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth
attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors
of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth
prolonged admiration.
No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the
cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each
of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters
his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far
nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing),
a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted
on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs
and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as
wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo
illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in
the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney,
the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins,
Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery
of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's
banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick
Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the
Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail,
Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice,
Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college
refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of
Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street
Warehouse, Fingal's Cave--all these moving scenes are still there for us
today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have
passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.

--Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?

--That's mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman.

--And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted.
Also now. This very moment. This very instant.

Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.

--Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs
to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold
by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle.

--Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.

--I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom.

--Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men.

That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old
lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a
sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And
then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as
limp as a wet rag.

--But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not
life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's
the very opposite of that that is really life.

--What? says Alf.

--Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says
he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is
there. If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment.

Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.

--A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.

--Well, says John Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour.

--That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love,
moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet.

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A
loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M.
B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo,
the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear
trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the
brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her
Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love
a certain person. And this person loves that other person because
everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.

--Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power,
citizen.

--Hurrah, there, says Joe.

--The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen.

And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.

--We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket.
What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women
and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text _God is love_
pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit
in the _United Irishman_ today about that Zulu chief that's visiting
England?

--What's that? says Joe.

So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts
reading out:

--A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented
yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting,
Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt
thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his
dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which
the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated
by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones,
tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial
relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that
he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible,
the volume of the word of God and the secret of England's greatness,
graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw
Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal
Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the
toast _Black and White_ from the skull of his immediate predecessor in
the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited
the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors'
book, subsequently executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the
course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious
applause from the girl hands.

--Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that
bible to the same use as I would.

--Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land
the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.

--Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.

--No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only
initialled: P.

--And a very good initial too, says Joe.

--That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag.

--Well, says J. J. , if they're any worse than those Belgians in the
Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man
what's this his name is?

--Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman.

--Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and
flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can
out of them.

--I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers.

--Who? says I.

--Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on
_Throwaway_ and he's gone to gather in the shekels.

--Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a
horse in anger in his life?

--That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back
that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip.
Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the
only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.

--He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.

--Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.

--There you are, says Terry.

Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of
the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was
letting off my _(Throwaway_ twenty to) letting off my load gob says I
to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in
Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings
is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was
telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have
done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube _she's
better_ or _she's_ (ow! ) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if
he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow! ) Ireland
my nation says he (hoik! phthook! ) never be up to those bloody (there's
the last of it) Jerusalem (ah! ) cuckoos.

So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it
was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper
all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off
of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk
about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that
puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show.
Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody
mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before
him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that
poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country
with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms.
Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No
security. Gob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the
road with every one.

--Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll
tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham.

Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power
with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of
the collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the
registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the
country at the king's expense.

Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their
palfreys.

--Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party.
Saucy knave! To us!

So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.

Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard.

--Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.

--Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds.
And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it.

--Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare
larder. I know not what to offer your lordships.

--How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant
countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun?

An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage.

--Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's
messengers (God shield His Majesty! ) you shall not want for aught. The
king's friends (God bless His Majesty! ) shall not go afasting in my
house I warrant me.

--Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty
trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?

Mine host bowed again as he made answer:

--What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of
venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head
with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon
of old Rhenish?

--Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!

--Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare
larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue.

So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.

--Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans.

--Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen
about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?

--That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege.

--Who made those allegations? says Alf.

--I, says Joe. I'm the alligator.

--And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like
the next fellow?

--Why not? says J. J. , when he's quite sure which country it is.

--Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the
hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.

--Who is Junius? says J. J.

--We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.