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Ulysses 

956 

of

 1305 

My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.  

ZOE: 

Yorkshire through and through.  

Come on all! 

(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.) 

STEPHEN: Pas seul! 

(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant 

from the table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. 

Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with 

hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth 

shut hand clasp part under thigh. With clang tinkle boomhammer 

tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes Toft’s cumbersome 

turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels 

fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.) 

THE PIANOLA: 

Though she’s a factory lass 

And wears no fancy clothes.  

(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they 

scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!) 

TUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore! 

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Ulysses 

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SIMON: Think of your mother’s people! 

STEPHEN: Dance of death. 

(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer, 

piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in 

cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through 

and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene 

swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two 

trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling 

gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong 

Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly 

with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback 

lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine 

relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!) 

(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls 

back. Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all 

around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He 

stops dead.) 

STEPHEN: Ho! 

(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in 

leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal 

veil, her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair 

is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on 

Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A 

choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) 

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 1305 

THE CHOIR: 

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum ... 

Iubilantium te virginum ...  

(from the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured 

jester’s dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, 

stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.) 

BUCK MULLIGAN: She’s beastly dead. The pity of 

it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his 

eyes) Mercurial Malachi! 

THE MOTHER: (With the subtle smile of death’s 

madness) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am 

dead. 

STEPHEN:  (Horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. 

What bogeyman’s trick is this? 

BUCK MULLIGAN: (Shakes his curling capbell) The 

mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She 

kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes on 

to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton. 

THE MOTHER: (Comes nearer, breathing upon him 

softly her breath of wetted ashes) All must go through it, 

Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too. 

Time will come. 

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Ulysses 

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STEPHEN: (Choking with fright, remorse and horror) They 

say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. 

Cancer did it, not I. Destiny. 

THE MOTHER: (A green rill of bile trickling from a side 

of her mouth) You sang that song to me. Love’s bitter 

mystery. 

STEPHEN: (Eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you 

know now. The word known to all men. 

THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you 

jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who 

had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? 

Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the 

Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, 

Stephen. 

STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena! 

THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. 

Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after 

your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, 

my firstborn, when you lay in my womb. 

ZOE: (Fanning herself with the grate fan) I’m melting! 

FLORRY: (Points to Stephen) Look! He’s white. 

BLOOM: (Goes to the window to open it more) Giddy. 

THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes) Repent! O, 

the fire of hell! 

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