A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (46 page)

26.25–6
Were we … bidding of the English people
: see preceding note.

26.30–3
Woe be … little ones
: Luke 17: 1–2; Jesus to his disciples, though he continues, ‘Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him’ (Luke 17: 3).

27.8
pope’s nose
: the turkey’s tail.

27.27
Billy with the lip
: the Most Reverend William J. Walsh, DD (1841–1921), archbishop of Dublin (1885–1921), a strong nationalist and supporter of land reform who initially held back from denouncing Parnell and urged other clergy to do the same; nevertheless, he too finally spoke.

27.27–8
tub of guts up in Armagh
: the Reverend Michael Logue (1840–1924), archbishop of Armagh (1887–1924), became a cardinal in 1893; after the divorce, Logue opposed the retention of Parnell as leader of the IPP.

27.30
Lord Leitrim’s coachman
: William Sydney Clements, Earl of Leitrim (1806–78), English, notorious absentee landlord of vast areas of Leitrim and Donegal, was murdered in 1877, his (Irish) coachmen supposedly attempting to save him from attack; the phrase is meant to indict those who would aid their oppressors.

28.22
renegade catholics
: those who changed religion from Catholic to Protestant to escape the draconian effects of the Penal Laws against Catholics in Ireland (enacted in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries); these included restricted rights to education, to the ownership of property (and livestock: famously, Catholics could not lawfully possess any horse worth more than £5), to the holding of public office, to the bearing of arms; the banishing of the Catholic clergy and ultimately the complete removal of the right to vote (see
F
154, 205–7, 244–5, 602–4); see too 21.18 and 38.36–7 nn.

28.29
county Wicklow
: county on the east coast south of Dublin. Parnell was a Wicklow man.

28.39–29.1
blackest protestant
: i.e. the most anti-Catholic.

29.8–9
O, come … mass
: parody of opening of traditional Irish ballads: ‘Come all you … ’. See 74.25 and n.

29.18
spoiled nun
: one who has either left the convent or never quite got there in the first place. See
E
25 for an account of what may have led to the ‘spoiling’ of the real-life counterpart of Dante.

29.19
Alleghanies
: a mountain range in the eastern United States.

29.20
chainies
: damaged china.

29.25
Tower of Ivory … House of Gold
: lines from the ‘Litany of Our Lady [of Loreto] To [and as elaborated epithetic description of] the Blessed Virgin Mary’, seeking her intercession on behalf of the supplicant; sung or chanted by the priest, responses by the congregation; so: ‘Tower of Ivory, pray for us. // House of Gold, pray for us’.

29.35
Arklow
: town in County Wicklow, on the east coast of Ireland,
c
. 40 miles south of Dublin.

29.35
the chief
: Parnell.

30.9
Priesthunter
: Parnell, in part, who was Protestant and suspected of anti-Catholicism, especially after the clergy’s attack on him, but also those who in supporting him were seen to be opposing the clergy. The phrase dates back to the the time of the Penal Laws when the Catholic clergy had been officially banished and bounty hunters not infrequently actually hunted priests down (though see
F
205).

30.9–10
The Paris Funds
: the IPP kept funds in Paris (and so away from British hands); with the split, Parnell was still technically in control of the funds and so could use them for the advantage of the minority Parnellite MPs in his last campaign; it did not take long for rumours of his improper use of the money to circulate.

30.10
Mr Fox
: pseudonym used by Parnell in his affair with Katherine O’Shea.

30.10
Kitty O’Shea
: nickname of Katherine O’Shea which carried an insulting sexual innuendo (not unlike a similarly feline epithet in current use).

30.13–14
a quid of Tullamore
: ‘quid’: ‘a piece of something (usually tobacco) suitable to be held in the mouth and chewed’ (from ‘cud’) (
SOED
); ‘Tullamore’: a chewing tobacco made in Tullamore, west of Dublin.

31.7
Cabinteely road
: i.e. he travelled to Dublin by a little-used backroad.

31.14
priestridden race
: the Catholic clergy were both numerous and often involved in the political affairs of Ireland, though not always against the nationalist cause Mr Casey espouses.

31.24
whiteboy
: the ‘Whiteboys’ were a secret society organized loosely around demand for agrarian reform which flourished first in the 1760s and again in the 1820s; they made midnight raids, wore white shirts over their clothing (ostensibly so they could see one another at night), did considerable damage, and committed no little violence against both people and animals in protest against, among other things, the exaction of exorbitant rents; the Catholic Church spoke against them. (See
F
223, 292–3.)

31.29–30
Touch them not … apple of My eye
: not quite Jesus; this echoes verses from Zech. 2: 8–9 (read as a prophecy of Christ’s Church): ‘For thus saith the Lord of hosts: After the glory he hath sent me to the nations that have robbed you: for he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye: for behold I lift up my hand upon them, and they shall be a prey to those that served them’ (Douay).

31.39–32.2
Didn’t the bishops … Marquess Cornwallis?
: During the rebellion of 1798, Charles, Marquess Cornwallis (1738–1805), was made Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland; once the rebellion was suppressed, his task became the securing of the Act of Union (1800) (5.23–4 n.). This was managed through ‘the favour and patronage of the Crown’ (read ‘virtual bribery’), though many Catholics were persuaded to support the Union in exchange for Catholic Emancipation. James Lanigan (d. 1812), Bishop of
Ossory, was one such who did deliver at least a complimentary address if not strictly one of ‘loyalty’. Cornwallis resigned when it became clear that Catholic Emancipation would not be forthcoming (it finally came 29 years later: see 21.18 n. above) (
F
280).

32.2–3
Didn’t the bishops … catholic emancipation?
: see preceding note. It is unclear exactly what ‘aspirations’ the Catholic bishops are meant to have so exchanged; they were less keen on independence than might have been wished, and were less supportive of O’Connell’s moves to secure abolition of the Act of Union than they had been of Emancipation (
F
316).

32.4
fenian movement
: ‘Fenian’ became the generally used name of the fraternal Fenian and Irish Republican Brotherhoods (founded 1858), the former technically the American support branch of the latter, the Irish secret society aimed at securing an independent Irish republic by military means if necessary. The name echoes that of the ‘Fianna’, the army of the ancient Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhail. The Catholic Church denounced the entire movement.

32.5–6
Terence Bellew MacManus
: MacManus (1823–60) was a successful shipping agent in Liverpool who joined the Young Irelanders (1844), a group committed to repeal of the Union and dedicated to the promotion of an Irish cultural nationalism; arrested attempting to flee the country after an abortive rising in Tipperary; sentenced to death; commuted to transportation to Australia whence he escaped to die in poverty in San Francisco. His body was brought back to Ireland, where Cardinal Cullen (see 32.10 n.) rejected a request that it lie in state and banned participation by Catholic clergy in the funeral. It proceeded nevertheless and occasioned the Fenians’ first great public demonstration in Ireland, 10 November 1861 (
F
366). Cf. ‘Portrait’, the essay in which Joyce first treats the ‘growth of the artist’ (
PSW
213).

32.10
Paul Cullen
: (1803–78), archbishop of Ireland, first Irishman to be made a cardinal (1866); undertook the reorganization of the Catholic Church in Ireland, called the first synod of Irish Catholic clergy since the twelfth century; opposed Fenianism and any movement that was not first devoted to the promotion of Catholicism (see
F
338–40). Cf. ‘Portrait’ (
PSW
213).

33.8
My dead king!
: Parnell, of course. Parnell died 6 October 1891, having married Katherine O’Shea fourteen weeks earlier. See Joyce’s essay ‘The Shade of Parnell’ (1912) (
CW
223–8 and
KB
191–6) for his analysis of the lasting impact of Parnell on Ireland; he uses the phrase ‘uncrowned king’ here (228) (the phrase itself apparently having been coined by Timothy Healy (see 192.29 n.))

33.14
Hill of Lyons
: hill about a third of the way between Clongowes and Dublin.

33.16
the minister
: see 18.5 n.

33.21
fecked
: ‘stolen’; ‘nicked’.

33.27
scut
: ‘ran away’, from ‘A short erect tail, esp. that of a hare, rabbit or deer’ (
SOED
).

33.33
sacristy
: room in a church or chapel where vestments, sacred vessels, etc. are kept and where the celebrant prepares for the service.

34.5
surplices
: loose white linen vestments worn over cassocks by clergy and choristers at a service.

34.8
boatbearer
: ‘boat’: the boat-shaped vessel in which the incense is carried; ‘boatbearer’: the one who carries the boat during the celebration of the mass; another carries the ‘thurible’ or ‘censer’ in which the incense is burned.

34.9
altar in the wood
: in the park adjoining Clongowes; Benediction was held there as part of the regular calendar of college events. (See 38.37 n.)

34.19
sprinter
: a cyclist, not a runner.

34.20
second of grammar
: see 6.18 n.

34.26–7
cricket … prof
: unclear; either the captain of the team, or the coach. ‘So important was cricket to the school that every season a professional was imported from England to coach the boys’ (Herbert Gorman,
James Joyce
(London: John Lane, 1941), 31).

34.29
rounders
: ball game not unlike American baseball.

35.18
Smugging
: ‘to smug’: ‘To toy amourously in secret’ (Joseph Wright,
English Dialect Dictionary
(London: Henry Frowde, 1898–1905)); here, clearly, ‘homosexual amorous toying’.

35.26–7
football fifteen
: see 6.13 n.

36.8–9
wanted to do something
: Stephen has already internalized the social requirement to refer to bodily functions only euphemistically.

36.14
Balbus was building a wall
: derived from the boys’ Latin lessons; here, from Cicero (106–43
BC
) in his
Letters to Atticus
, xii. 2: ‘[Balbus] is building [new mansions for himself]: for what cares he?’ (See
A
.)

36.18
Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly
: similar to the above, this time a pun on the title of the most famous work of [Gaius] Julius Caesar (100–44
BC
),
Commentarii de Bello Gallico
(‘Commentaries on the Gallic War’).

36.27
six and eight
: shorthand for a particular punishment: number of strokes that the palms of the hands are struck: three on each followed by four on each.

36.29–30
twisting the note … open it
: the boy being punished would have to carry a note which bore the kind and degree of punishment to be administered from the teacher to the person who would then execute the sentence; ‘old Barrett’ has made it impossible for the boy to discover in advance his punishment without being detected.

36.30
ferulæ
: Latin: plural of ‘ferula’: ‘A rod, cane or other instrument of punishment [here, a pandybat];
figuratively
, school punishment’ (
SOED
); so, the strokes to be received.

36.32
prefect of studies
: schoolmaster in charge of academic matters (and, here, of ensuring through punishment exacted or threatened that studies are properly attended to).

36.39
flogged
: beaten with a cane or rod.

37.16
twice nine
: see 36.27 n.; this time, nine on each hand.

37.17
vital spot
: i.e. the boys will not get ‘ferulæ’ on their hands, they will be flogged on their buttocks.

38.34
monstrance
: ‘an open or transparent receptacle in which the consecrated Host is exposed for veneration’ (
OERD
).

38.36–7
flashing gold thing … God was put
: the upper part of the monstrance is made to represent rays of sun, as though issuing from the Host. In Catholicism, the consecrated Host is meant literally to have ‘become God’ through transubstantiation, rather than as in Protestantism where it metaphorically represents God and his sacrifice as Christ. (The 1673 Test Act in England required that anyone holding public office forswear belief in transubstantiation and take communion in the Church of England. It was not repealed until 1828.)