Day 10.

Today's read starts at the bottom of page 13 and runs to the top of 14, which includes the text:

1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares upat Ublanium.

566 A.D. On Baalfire's night of this year after deluge a crone that hadde a wickered Kish for to hale dead turves from the bog look-it under the blay of her Kish as she ran for to sothisfeige her cowrieosity and be me sawl but she found hersell sackvulle of swart goody quickenshoon and small illigant brogues, so rich in sweat.

Blurry works at Hurdlesford.
(Silent.)

566 A.D. At this time it fell out that a brazenlockt damsel grieved (sobralasolas!) because that Puppette her minion was ravisht of her by the ogre Puropeus Pious. Bloody wars in Ballyaughacleeagh-bally.

1132 A.D. Two sons at an hour were born until a goodman and his hag. These sons called themselves Caddy and Primas. Primas was a santryman and drilled all decent people. Caddy went to Winehouse and wrote o peace a farce. Blotty words for Dublin.

How is anyone supposed to decode this you ask? Not easily. You're not meant to decipher every phrase. A lot of this is nursery rhyme sing-song.

Emmets are ants

Groot = great

Ublanium is a childish spelling of Dublin, the presumed location of this fever dream.

The rest is just purposeful misspellings.

1132 is present throughout the book and is 283 x 4, four being the number of old men at the pub and 283 being the year Finn MacCool died. There's no payoff here. It's Irish pride. Virgil writing of Aeneas. It's also the year the year St. Laurence O'Toole was born. More Irish pride.

566 is 1132 cut in half. Baalfire's night is bonfire night or Beltane. "A crone that hadde a wickered Kish." An old woman with a wickered basket (or a wicked wish) collecting peat from the bog. More chaos we're supposed to find whimsical and intelligent. It's like reading a code book from beginning to end and claiming there's a story in that cryptography lesson.

Note: There is no proof of all this number-coding. I am just sitting here doing the math and looking up what happens in those years for real.

Ballyaughacleeagh-bally is a misspelling of a famous place in Ireland, so even the Irish reading this book won't be able to decipher it. Functionally, “this is a place-name” is enough. It's like reading a Drizzt novel. Ice-T? You with me?

The second time 1132 is mentioned, it's more myth making. Bringing up new name in the typical metaphysical approach of two sons. It's always two sons. One is a solider and aggressive. One is a writer and reflective.

There's a clever pun late in the page. Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antediluvious and annadominant the copyist must have fled with his scroll. Scribicide could just mean the death of words, here. The two sons are young and old, antediluvious and annadominant.

Later in the page, the younger of the two (who is a writer) runs off with a scroll (breaking history) before killing himself. Or someone kills him. There's also another thunder reference in the middle of a sentence in there.

At the end, a foreign priest or clergyman reads from a book (Liber Lividus, envious book, tome of darkness), perhaps to say where Finnegan's soul is going. It's unclear.

Someone named pricket (lower case, so it's also a young deer, implying pricket is the younger brother; prick is another dick joke) is mentioned and his sister goes chaste. Pricket’s sister is literally a maid, lower-class, shamming modesty. The lush green imagery hints at her withdrawal from the social/sexual world. Joyce is echoing Guinevere’s final turn to the convent in the Arthurian myth, blending local Dublin characters with legendary archetypes. My guess? She was fucking Finnegan and now no one will want her. So she has to go retreats from social life and stops dating. Fits the Arthur Myth a little. More ties to Myth-making. Finnegans wake is turning into a monomyth.

This paragraph is the best part of the page. Maybe the best in the book so far. Let's see if it pays off later.

“Blotty words for Dublin.”