Clongowes College in the 1890s, from a picture reproduced in O’Mahoney, *The Sunny Side of Ireland: How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway*, 1898. Source: The British Library.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Books By James Joyce
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”
“Dubliners” (Short stories)
“Exiles” (Drama)
“Chamber Music” (Poems)

—

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
By
James Joyce
New York
B. W. Huebsch, Inc.
MCMXXI

—

First printing, December 1916
Second printing, April 1917
Third printing, June 1918
Fourth printing, September 1921

—

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

“Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII., 18.

CHAPTER I

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was
a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow
that was down along the road met a nicens little boy
named baby tuckoo….

His father told him that story: his father looked at him
through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road
where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.

He sang that song. That was his song.

O, the green wothe hotheth.

When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets
cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the
queer smell.

His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She

[1]

played on the piano the sailor’s hornpipe for him to
dance. He danced:

Tralala lala,
Tralala tralaladdy,
Tralala lala,
Tralala lala.

Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older
than his father and mother but Uncle Charles was older
than Dante.

Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with
the maroon velvet back was for Michael Davitt and the
brush with the green velvet back was for Parnell. Dante
gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of
tissue paper.

The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different
father and mother. They were Eileen’s father
and mother. When they were grown up he was going to
marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:

— O, Stephen will apologise.

Dante said:

— O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his
eyes.—

Pull out his eyes,
Apologise,
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.

Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise.

****
[2]

The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. All
were shouting and the prefects urged them on with
strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly and
after every charge and thud of the foot-ballers the
greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey
light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of
his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to
run now and then. He felt his body small and weak
amid the throng of players and his eyes were weak and
watery. Rody Kickham was not like that: he would be
captain of the third line all the fellows said.

Rody Kickham was a decent fellow but Nasty Roche
was a stink. Rody Kickham had greaves in his number
and a hamper in the refectory. Nasty Roche had big
hands. He called the Friday pudding dog-in-the-blanket.
And one day he had asked:

— What is your name?

Stephen had answered: Stephen Dedalus.

Then Nasty Roche had said:

—”What kind of a name is that?

And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty
Roche had asked:

—What is your father?

Stephen had answered:

—A gentleman.

Then Nasty Roche had asked:

—Is he a magistrate?

He crept about from point to point on the fringe of
his line, making little runs now and then. But his hands
were bluish with cold. He kept his hands in the side
pockets of his belted grey suit. That was a belt round
his pocket. And belt was also to give a fellow a belt.
One day a fellow had said to Cantwell:

[3]

— I’d give you such a belt in a second.
Cantwell had answered:

— Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a
belt. I’d like to see you. He’d give you a toe in the
rump for yourself.

That was not a nice expression. His mother had told
him not to speak with the rough boys in the college.
Nice mother! The first day in the hall of the castle when
she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to
her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red.
But he had pretended not to see that she was going to
cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so nice
when she cried. And his father had given him two fiveshilling
pieces for pocket money. And his father had
told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and,
whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. Then at
the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with
his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the
breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and
mother on it. They had cried to him from the car, waving
their hands:

— Good-bye, Stephen, goodbye!
— Good-bye, Stephen, goodbye!

He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful
of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to
look through the legs. The fellows were struggling and
groaning and their legs were rubbing and kicking and
stamping. Then Jack Lawton’s yellow boots dodged out
the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after. He
ran after them a little way and then stopped. It was
useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for
the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would

[4]

change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventyseven
to seventysix.

It would be better to be in the study hall than out
there in the cold. The sky was pale and cold but there
were lights in the castle. He wondered from which window
Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the haha
and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the
windows. One day when he had been called to the castle
the butler had shown him the marks of the soldiers’ slugs
in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of
shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and
warm to see the lights in the castle. It was like something
in a book. Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that.
And there were nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell’s
Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were
only sentences to learn the spelling from.

Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals.

It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire,
leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sentences.
He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next
his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into
the square ditch because he would not swop his little
snuffbox for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror
of forty. How cold and slimy the water had
been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the
scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting
for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the
fender and her jewelly slippers were so hot and they had

[5]

such a lovely warm smell! Dante knew a lot of things.
She had taught him where the Mozambique Channel was
and what was the longest river in America and what
was the name of the highest mountain in the moon.
Father Arnall knew more than Dante because he was a
priest but both his father and Uncle Charles said that
Dante was a clever woman and a wellread woman. And
when Dante made that noise after dinner and then put
up her hand to her mouth: that was heartburn.

A voice cried far out on the playground:

— All in!

Then other voices cried from the lower and third
lines:

—All in! All in!

The players closed around, flushed and muddy, and
he went among them, glad to go in. Rody Kickham held
the ball by its greasy lace. A fellow asked him to give
it one last: but he walked on without even answering the
fellow. Simon Moonan told him not to because the prefect
was looking. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan
and said:

—We all know why you speak. You are McGlade’s
suck.

Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon
Moonan that name because Simon Moonan used to tie
the prefect’s false sleeves behind his back and the prefect
used to let on to be angry. But the sound was ugly.
Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the
Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by
the chain after and the dirty water went down through
the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down
slowly the hole in the basin had made a sound like that:
suck. Only louder.

[6]

To remember that and the white look of the lavatory
made him feel cold and then hot. There were two
cocks that you turned and water came out: cold and hot.
He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could see the
names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer
thing.

And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was
queer and wettish. But soon the gas would be lit and
in burning it made a light noise like a little song. Always
the same: and when the fellows stopped talking in
the playroom you could hear it.

It was the hour for sums. Father Arnall wrote a hard
sum on the board and then said:

— Now then, who will win? Go ahead, York! Go
ahead, Lancaster!

Stephen tried his best but the sum was too hard and
he felt confused. The little silk badge with the white
rose on it that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began
to flutter. He was no good at sums but he tried his
best so that York might not lose. Father Arnall’s face
looked very black but he was not in a wax: he was laughing.
Then Jack Lawton cracked his fingers and Father
Arnall looked at his copybook and said:

—Right. Bravo Lancaster! The red rose wins.
Come on now, York! Forge ahead!

Jack Lawton looked over from his side. The little
silk badge with the red rose on it looked very rich because
he had a blue sailor top on. Stephen felt his own
face red too, thinking of all the bets about who would
get first place in Elements, Jack Lawton or he. Some
weeks Jack Lawton got the card for first and some weeks
he got the card for first. His white silk badge fluttered
and fluttered as he worked at the next sum and heard

[7]

Father Arnall’s voice. Then all his eagerness passed
away and he felt his face quite cool. He thought his
face must be white because it felt so cool. He could not
get out the answer for the sum but it did not matter.
White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours
to think of. And the cards for first place and third place
were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender.
Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to
think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours
and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms
on the little green place. But you could not have
a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you
could.

The bell rang and then the classes began to file out
of the rooms and along the corridors towards the refectory.
He sat looking at the two prints of butter on his
plate but could not eat the damp bread. The tablecloth
was damp and limp. But he drank off the hot
weak tea which the clumsy scullion, girt with a white
apron, poured into his cup. He wondered whether the
scullion’s apron was damp too or whether all white things
were cold and damp. Nasty Roche and Saurin drank
cocoa that their people sent them in tins. They said
they could not drink the tea; that it was hogwash. Their
fathers were magistrates, the fellows said.

All the boys seemed to him very strange. They had
all fathers and mothers and different clothes and voices.
He longed to be at home and lay his head on his mother’s
lap. But he could not: and so he longed for the play
and study and prayers to be over and to be in bed.

He drank another cup of hot tea and Fleming said:

—What’s up? Have you a pain or what’s up with
you?

[8]

—I don’t know, Stephen said.
—Sick in your bread basket—Fleming said—because
your face looks white. It will go away.
— O yes, Stephen said.

But he was not sick there. He thought that he was
sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming
was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He
leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the
flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory
every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made
a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps
the roar was shut off like a train going into a tunnel.
That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that
and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped.
He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and
then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to
hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel
again and then stop.

Then the higher line fellows began to come down along
the matting in the middle of the refectory, Paddy Kath
and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard who was allowed
to smoke cigars and the little Portuguese who wore the
woolly cap. And then the lower line tables and the tables
of the third line. And every single fellow had a
different way of walking.

He sat in a corner of the playroom pretending to watch
a game of dominos and once or twice he was able to
hear for an instant the little song of the gas. The prefect
was at the door with some boys and Simon Moonan
was knotting his false sleeves. He was telling them something
about Tullabeg.

Then he went away from the door and Wells came
over to Stephen and said:

[9]

— Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before
you go to bed?

Stephen answered:

— I do.

Wells turned to the other fellows and said:

— O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother
every night before he goes to bed.

The other fellows stopped their game and turned round,
laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said:

— I do not.

Wells said:

— O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his
mother before he goes to bed.

They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with
them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a
moment. What was the right answer to the question?
He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells
must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar.
He tried to think of Wells’s mother but he did not
dare to raise his eyes to Wells’s face. He did not like
Wells’s face. It was Wells who had shouldered him into
the square ditch the day before because he would not
swop his little snuffbox for Wells’s seasoned hacking
chestnut, the conqueror of forty. It was a mean thing to
do; all the fellows said it was. And how cold and slimy
the water had been! And a fellow had once seen a big
rat jump plop into the scum.

The cold slime of the ditch covered his whole body;
and, when the bell rang for study and the lines filed out
of the playrooms, he felt the cold air of the corridor and
staircase inside his clothes. He still tried to think what
was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or
wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss?

[10]

You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then
his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His
mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and
they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise:
kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?

Sitting in the study hall he opened the lid of his desk
and changed the number pasted up inside from seventyseven
to seventysix. But the Christmas vacation was
very far away: but one time it would come because the
earth moved round always.

There was a picture of the earth on the first page of
his geography: a big ball in the middle of clouds. Fleming
had a box of crayons and one night during free study
he had coloured the earth green and the clouds maroon.
That was like the two brushes in Dante’s press, the brush
with the green velvet back for Parnell and the brush
with the maroon velvet back for Michael Davitt. But he
had not told Fleming to colour them those colours. Fleming
had done it himself.

He opened the geography to study the lesson; but he
could not learn the names of places in America. Still
they were all different places that had different names.
They were all in different countries and the countries
were in continents and the continents were in the world
and the world was in the universe.

He turned to the flyleaf of the geography and read
what he had written there: himself, his name and where
he was.

Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare

[11]

Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe

That was in his writing: and Fleming one night for a
cod had written on the opposite page:

Stephen Dedalus is my name,
Ireland is my nation,
Clongowes is my dwellingplace
And heaven my expectation.

He read the verses backwards but then they were not
poetry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the
top till he came to his own name. That was he: and
he read down the page again. What was after the universe?
Nothing. But was there anything round the
universe to show where it stopped before the nothing
place began? It could not be a wall but there could be
a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very
big to think about everything and everywhere. Only
God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought
that must be but he could think only of God. God
was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu
was the French for God and that was God’s name too;
and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then
God knew at once that it was a French person that was
praying. But though there were different names for
God in all the different languages in the world and God
understood what all the people who prayed said in their
different languages still God remained always the same
God and God’s real name was God.

[12]

It made him very tired to think that way. It made
him feel his head very big. He turned over the flyleaf
and looked wearily at the green round earth in the middle
of the maroon clouds. He wondered which was right,
to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had
ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for
Parnell one day with her scissors and had told him that
Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were
arguing at home about that. That was called politics.
There were two sides in it: Dante was on one side and
his father and Mr. Casey were on the other side but his
mother and Uncle Charles were on no side. Every day
there was something in the paper about it.

It pained him that he did not know well what politics
meant and that he did not know where the universe
ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be
like the fellows in Poetry and Rhetoric? They had big
voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry.
That was very far away. First came the vacation and
then the next term and then vacation again and then
again another term and then again the vacation. It was
like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like
the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you
opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation;
tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was! It was
better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel
and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be
lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they
were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold
they were first. But then they got hot and then he could
sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again.
Night prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to
yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a

[13]

warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets,
warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so
warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to
yawn.

The bell rang for night prayers and he filed out of the
study hall after the others and down the staircase and
along the corridors to the chapel. The corridors were
darkly lit and the chapel was darkly lit. Soon all would
be dark and sleeping. There was cold night air in the
chapel and the marbles were the colour the sea was at
night. The sea was cold day and night: but it was colder
at night. It was cold and dark under the seawall beside
his father’s house. But the kettle would be on the hob to
make punch.

The prefect of the chapel prayed above his head and
his memory knew the responses:

O Lord, open our lips
And our mouths shall announce Thy praise.
Incline unto our aid, O God!
O Lord, make haste to help us!

There was a cold night smell in the chapel. But it
was a holy smell. It was not like the smell of the old
peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday
mass. That was a smell of air and rain and turf and
corduroy. But they were very holy peasants. They
breathed behind him on his neck and sighed as they
prayed. They lived in Clane, a fellow said: there were
little cottages there and he had seen a woman standing at
the halfdoor of a cottage with a child in her arms, as the
cars had come past from Sallins. It would be lovely to
sleep for one night in that cottage before the fire of smok-

[14]

ing turf, in the dark lit by the fire, in the warm dark,
breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf
and corduroy. But, O, the road there between the trees
was dark! You would be lost in the dark. It made him
afraid to think of how it was.

He heard the voice of the prefect of the chapel saying
the last prayer. He prayed it too against the dark outside
under the trees.

Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, this habitation and
drive away from it all the snares of the enemy. May
Thy holy angels dwell herein to preserve us in peace
and may Thy blessing be always upon us through
Christ our Lord. Amen.

His fingers trembled as he undressed himself in the
dormitory. He told his fingers to hurry up. He had
to undress and then kneel and say his own prayers and
be in bed before the gas was lowered so that he might not
go to hell when he died. He rolled his stockings off and
put on his nightshirt quickly and knelt trembling at his
bedside and repeated his prayers quickly, fearing that
the gas would go down. He felt his shoulders shaking as
he murmured:

God bless my father and my mother and spare them
to me!
God bless my little brothers and sisters and spare
them to me!
God bless Dante and Uncle Charles and spare them
to me!

He blessed himself and climbed quickly into bed and,
tucking the end of the nightshirt under his feet, curled

[15]

himself together under the cold white sheets, shaking and
trembling. But he would not go to hell when he died;
and the shaking would stop. A voice bade the boys in
the dormitory goodnight. He peered out for an instant
over the coverlet and saw the yellow curtains round and
before his bed that shut him off on all sides. The light
was lowered quietly.

The prefect’s shoes went away. Where? Down the
staircase and along the corridors or to his room at the
end? He saw the dark. Was it true about the black
dog that walked there at night with eyes as big as
carriagelamps? They said it was the ghost of a murderer.
A long shiver of fear flowed over his body. He saw the
dark entrance hall of the castle. Old servants in old
dress were in the ironingroom above the staircase. It
was long ago. The old servants were quiet. There was
a fire there but the hall was still dark. A figure came up
the staircase from the hall. He wore the white cloak of
a marshal; his face was pale and strange; he held his
hand pressed to his side. He looked out of strange eyes
at the old servants. They looked at him and saw their
master’s face and cloak and knew that he had received
his death wound. But only the dark was where they
looked: only dark silent air. Their master had received
his death wound on the battlefield of Prague far away
over the sea. He was standing on the field; his hand
was pressed to his side; his face was pale and strange and
he wore the white cloak of a marshal.

O how cold and strange it was to think of that! All
the dark was cold and strange. There were pale strange
faces there, great eyes like carriagelamps. They were
the ghosts of murderers, the figures of marshals who had
received their death wound on battlefields far away over

[16]

the sea. What did they wish to say that their faces were
so strange?

Visit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, this habitation
and drive away from it all …

Going home for the holidays! That would be lovely:
the fellows had told him. Getting up on the cars in the
early wintry morning outside the door of the castle.
The cars were rolling on the gravel. Cheers for the rector!

Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!

The cars drove past the chapel and all caps were raised.
They drove merrily along the country roads. The
drivers pointed with their whips to Bodenstown. The
fellows cheered. They passed the farmhouse of the Jolly
Farmer. Cheer after cheer after cheer. Through Clane
they drove, cheering and cheered. The peasant women
stood at the halfdoors, the men stood here and there.
The lovely smell there was in the wintry air: the smell
of Clane: rain and wintry air and turf smouldering and
corduroy.

The train was full of fellows: a long long chocolate
train with cream facings. The guards went to and fro
opening, closing, locking, unlocking the doors. They
were men in dark blue and silver; they had silvery
whistles and their keys made a quick music: click, click:
click, click.

And the train raced on over the flat lands and past the
Hill of Allen. The telegraph poles were passing, passing.
The train went on and on. It knew. There were
lanterns in the hall of his father’s house and ropes of
green branches. There were holly and ivy round the

[17]

pierglass and holly and ivy, green and red, twined round
the chandeliers. There were red holly and green ivy
round the old portraits on the walls. Holly and ivy for
him and for Christmas.

Lovely…

All the people. Welcome home, Stephen! Noises of
welcome. His mother kissed him. Was that right?
His father was a marshal now: higher than a magistrate.
Welcome home, Stephen!

Noises…

There was a noise of curtainrings running back along
the rods, of water being splashed in the basins. There
was a noise of rising and dressing and washing in the
dormitory: a noise of clapping of hands as the prefect
went up and down telling the fellows to look sharp. A
pale sunlight showed the yellow curtains drawn back, the
tossed beds. His bed was very hot and his face and body
were very hot.

He got up and sat on the side of his bed. He was
weak. He tried to pull on his stocking. It had a horrid
rough feel. The sunlight was queer and cold.

Fleming said:

—Are you not well?

He did not know; and Fleming said:

— Get back into bed. I’ll tell McGlade you’re not
well.

— He’s sick.

—Who is?

— Tell McGlade.

— Get back into bed.

— Is he sick?

A fellow held his arms while he loosened the stocking
clinging to his foot and climbed back into the hot bed.

[18]

He crouched down between the sheets, glad of their
tepid glow. He heard the fellows talk among themselves
about him as they dressed for mass. It was a mean thing
to do, to shoulder him into the square ditch, they were
saying.

Then their voices ceased; they had gone. A voice at
his bed said:

— Dedalus, don’t spy on us, sure you won’t?

Wells’s face was there. He looked at it and saw that
Wells was afraid.

—I didn’t mean to. Sure you won’t?

His father had told him, whatever he did, never to
peach on a fellow. He shook his head and answered no
and felt glad.

Wells said:

— I didn’t mean to, honour bright. It was only for
cod. I’m sorry.

The face and the voice went away. Sorry because he
was afraid. Afraid that it was some disease. Canker
was a disease of plants and cancer one of animals: or another
different. That was a long time ago then out on
the playgrounds in the evening light, creeping from point
to point on the fringe of his line, a heavy bird flying low
through the grey light. Leicester Abbey lit up. Wolsey
died there. The abbots buried him themselves.

It was not Wells’s face, it was the prefect’s. He was
not foxing. No, no: he was sick really. He was not
foxing. And he felt the prefect’s hand on his forehead;
and he felt his forehead warm and damp against the
prefect’s cold damp hand. That was the way a rat felt,
slimy and damp and cold. Every rat had two eyes to
look out of. Sleek slimy coats, little little feet tucked
up to jump, black slimy eyes to look out of. They could

[19]

understand how to jump. But the minds of rats could
not understand trigonometry. When they were dead
they lay on their sides. Their coats dried then. They
were only dead things.

The prefect was there again and it was his voice that
was saying that he was to get up, that Father Minister
had said he was to get up and dress and go to the infirmary.
And while he was dressing himself as quickly
as he could the prefect said:

—We must pack off to Brother Michael because we
have the collywobbles!

He was very decent to say that. That was all to make
him laugh. But he could not laugh because his cheeks
and lips were all shivery: and then the prefect had to
laugh by himself.

The prefect cried:

— Quick march! Hayfoot! Strawfoot!

They went together down the staircase and along the
corridor and past the bath. As he passed the door he
remembered with a vague fear the warm turf-coloured
bogwater, the warm moist air, the noise of plunges, the
smell of the towels, like medicine.

Brother Michael was standing at the door of the infirmary
and from the door of the dark cabinet on his
right came a smell like medicine. That came from the
bottles on the shelves. The prefect spoke to Brother
Michael and Brother Michael answered and called the
prefect sir. He had reddish hair mixed with grey and a
queer look. It was queer that he would always be a
brother. It was queer too that you could not call him
sir because he was a brother and had a different kind of
look. Was he not holy enough or why could he not
patch up on the others?

[20]

There were two beds in the room and in one bed there
was, a fellow: and when they went in he called out:

— Hello! It’s young Dedalus! What’s up?

— The sky is up, Brother Michael said.

He was a fellow out of the third of grammar and, while
Stephen was undressing, he asked Brother Michael to
bring him a round of buttered toast.
— Ah, do! he said.

— Butter you up! said Brother Michael. You’ll get
your walking papers in the morning when the doctor
comes.

— Will I? the fellow said. I’m not well yet.

Brother Michael repeated:

—You’ll get your walking papers. I tell you.

He bent down to rake the fire. He had a long back
like the long back of a tramhorse. He shook the poker
gravely and nodded his head at the fellow out of third of
grammar.

Then Brother Michael went away and after a while the
fellow out of third of grammar turned in towards the
wall and fell asleep.

That was the infirmary. He was sick then. Had they
written home to tell his mother and father? But it
would be quicker for one of the priests to go himself to
tell them. Or he would write a letter for the priest to
bring.

Dear Mother,
I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and
take me home. I am in the infirmary.
Your fond son,
Stephen

[21]

How far away they were! There was cold sunlight
outside the window. He wondered if he would die.
You could die just the same on a sunny day. He might
die before his mother came. Then he would have a dead
mass in the chapel like the way the fellows had told him
it was when Little had died. All the fellows would be
at the mass, dressed in black, all with sad faces. Wells
too would be there but no fellow would look at him.
The rector would be there in a cope of black and gold
and there would be tall yellow candles on the altar and
round the catafalque. And they would carry the coffin
out of the chapel slowly and he would be buried in the
little graveyard of the community off the main avenue
of limes. And Wells would be sorry then for what he
had done. And the bell would toll slowly.

He could hear the tolling. He said over to himself the
song that Brigid had taught him.

Dingdong! The castle bell!
Farewell, my mother!
Bury me in the old churchyard
Beside my eldest brother.
My coffin shall be black,
Six angels at my back,
Two to sing and two to pray
And two to carry my soul away.

How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the
words were where they said Bury me in the old churchyard!
A tremor passed over his body. How sad and
how beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for
himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music,
The bell! The bell! Farewell! O farewell!

[22]

The cold sunlight was weaker and Brother Michael was
standing at his bedside with a bowl of beeftea. He was
glad for his mouth was hot and dry. He could hear them
playing in the playgrounds. And the day was going on
in the college just as if he were there.

Then Brother Michael was going away and the fellow
out of third of grammar told him to be sure and come
back and tell him all the news in the paper. He told
Stephen that his name was Athy and that his father kept
a lot of racehorses that were spiffing jumpers and that
his father would give a good tip to Brother Michael any
time he wanted it because Brother Michael was very decent
and always told him the news out of the paper they
got every day up in the castle. There was every kind of
news in the paper: accidents, shipwrecks, sports and
politics.

—Now it is all about politics in the papers, he said.
Do your people talk about that too?

—Yes, Stephen said.

—Mine too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

—You have a queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer
name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your
name is like Latin.

Then he asked:

—Are you good at riddles?

Stephen answered: —Not very good.

Then he said:

— Can you answer me this one? Why is the county
of Kildare like the leg of a fellow’s breeches?

Stephen thought what could be the answer and then
said:

[23]

— I give it up.

—Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see
the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare, and
a thigh is the other thigh.

—O, I see, Stephen said.

— That’s an old riddle, he said.

After a moment he said:

—I say!

—What? asked Stephen.

—You know, he said, you can ask that riddle another
way.

— Can you? said Stephen.

— The same riddle, he said. Do you know the other
way to ask it?

— No, said Stephen.

— Can you not think of the other way? he said.

He looked at Stephen over the bedclothes as he spoke.
Then he lay back on the pillow and said:

— There is another way but I won’t tell you what it is.

Why did he not tell it? His father, who kept the racehorses,
must be a magistrate too like Saurin’s father and
Nasty Roche’s father. He thought of his own father, of
how he sang songs while his mother played and of how
he always gave him a shilling when he asked for sixpence
and he felt sorry for him that he was not a magistrate
like the other boys’ fathers. Then why was he sent to
that place with them? But his father had told him that
he would be no stranger there because his granduncle had
presented an address to the Liberator there fifty years
before. You could know the people of that time by their
old dress. It seemed to him a solemn time; and he wondered
if that was the time when the fellows in Clongowes
wore blue coats with brass buttons and yellow waistcoats

[24]

and caps of rabbit-skin and drank beer like grownup
people and kept greyhounds of their own to course the
hares with.

He looked at the window and saw that the daylight
had grown weaker. There would be cloudy grey light
over the playgrounds. There was no noise on the playgrounds.
The class must be doing the themes or perhaps
Father Arnall was reading out of the book.

It was queer that they had not given him any medicine.
Perhaps Brother Michael would bring it back
when he came. They said you got stinking stuff to
drink when you were in the infirmary. But he felt better
now than before. It would be nice getting better
slowly. You could get a book then. There was a book
in the library about Holland. There were lovely foreign
names in it and pictures of strange-looking cities and
ships. It made you feel so happy.

How pale the light was at the window! But that was
nice. The fire rose and fell on the wall. It was like
waves. Someone had put coal on and he heard voices.
They were talking. It was the noise of the waves. Or
the waves were talking among themselves as they rose
and fell.

He saw the sea of waves, long dark waves rising and
falling, dark under the moonless night. A tiny light
twinkled at the pierhead where the ship was entering:
and he saw a multitude of people gathered by the waters’
edge to see the ship that was entering their harbour. A
tall man stood on the deck, looking out towards the flat
dark land: and by the light at the pierhead he saw his
face, the sorrowful face of Brother Michael.

He saw him lift his hand towards the people and
heard him say in a loud voice of sorrow over the waters:

[25]

— He is dead. We saw him lying upon the catafalque.
A wail of sorrow went up from the people.

—Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!

They fell upon their knees, moaning in sorrow.

And he saw Dante in a maroon velvet dress and with
a green velvet mantle hanging from her shoulders walking
proudly and silently past the people who knelt by
the waters’ edge.

A great fire, banked high and red, flamed in the grate
and under the ivy twined branches of the chandelier the
Christmas table was spread. They had come home a little
late and still dinner was not ready: but it would be
ready in a jiffy, his mother had said. They were waiting
for the door to open and for the servants to come in,
holding the big dishes covered with their heavy metal
covers.

All were waiting: Uncle Charles, who sat far away in
the shadow of the window, Dante and Mr Casey, who sat
in the easy chairs at either side of the hearth, Stephen,
seated on a chair between them, his feet resting on the
toasted boss. Mr Dedalus looked at himself in the pierglass
above the mantelpiece, waxed out his moustache
ends and then, parting his coat tails, stood with his back
to the glowing fire: and still from time to time he withdrew
a hand from his coat tail to wax out one of his
moustache ends. Mr Casey leaned his head to one side
and, smiling, tapped the gland of his neck with his fingers.
And Stephen smiled too for he knew now that it
was not true that Mr Casey had a purse of silver in his
throat. He smiled to think how the silvery noise which
Mr Casey used to make had deceived him. And when
he had tried to open Mr Casey’s hand to see if the purse

[26]

of silver was hidden there he had seen that the fingers
could not be straightened out: and Mr Casey had told
him that he had got those three cramped fingers making
a birthday present for Queen Victoria.
Mr Casey tapped the gland of his neck and smiled at
Stephen with sleepy eyes: and Mr Dedalus said to him:

— Yes. Well now, that’s all right. O, we had a good
walk, hadn’t we, John? Yes… I wonder if
there’s any likelihood of dinner this evening. Yes.
… O, well now, we got a good breath of ozone
round the Head today. Ay, bedad.

He turned to Dante and said:

—You didn’t stir out at all, Mrs Riordan?

Dante frowned and said shortly:

— No.

Mr Dedalus dropped his coat tails and went over to
the sideboard. He brought forth a great stone jar of
whisky from the locker and filled the decanter slowly,
bending now and then to see how much he had poured
in. Then replacing the jar in the locker he poured a
little of the whisky into two glasses, added a little water
and came back with them to the fireplace.

—A thimbleful, John, he said, just to whet your
appetite.

Mr Casey took the glass, drank, and placed it near
him on the mantelpiece. Then he said:

—Well, I can’t help thinking of our friend Christopher
manufacturing…

He broke into a fit of laughter and coughing and
added:

—… manufacturing that champagne for those
fellows.

Mr Dedalus laughed loudly.

[27]

— Is it Christy? he said. There’s more cunning in
one of those warts on his bald head than in a pack of
jack foxes.

He inclined his head, closed his eyes, and, licking his
lips profusely, began to speak with the voice of the
hotel keeper.

—And he has such a soft mouth when he’s speaking
to you, don’t you know. He’s very moist and watery
about the dewlaps, God bless him.

Mr Casey was still struggling through his fit of coughing
and laughter. Stephen, seeing and hearing the hotel
keeper through his father’s face and voice, laughed.

Mr Dedalus put up his eyeglass and, staring down at
him, said quietly and kindly:

—What are you laughing at, you little puppy, you?

The servants entered and placed the dishes on the
table. Mrs Dedalus followed and the places were arranged.

— Sit over, she said.

Mr Dedalus went to the end of the table and said:

—Now, Mrs Riordan, sit over. John, sit you down,
my hearty.

He looked round to where Uncle Charles sat and said:

—Now then, sir, there’s a bird here waiting for you.

When all had taken their seats he laid his hand on the
cover and then said quickly, withdrawing it:

—Now, Stephen.

Stephen stood up in his place to say the grace before
meals:

Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which through
Thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ our
Lord. Amen.

[28]

All blessed themselves and Mr Dedalus with a sigh of
pleasure lifted from the dish the heavy cover pearled
around the edge with glistening drops.
Stephen looked at the plump turkey which had lain,
trussed and skewered, on the kitchen table. He knew
that his father had paid a guinea for it in Dunn’s of
D’Olier Street and that the man had prodded it often at
the breastbone to show how good it was: and he remembered
the man’s voice when he had said:

— Take that one, sir. That’s the real Ally Daly.

Why did Mr Barrett in Clongowes call his pandybat
a turkey? But Clongowes was far away: and the
warm heavy smell of turkey and ham and celery rose
from the plates and dishes and the great fire was banked
high and red in the grate and the green ivy and red
holly made you feel so happy and when dinner was ended
the big plum pudding would be carried in, studded with
peeled almonds and sprigs of holly, with bluish fire
running around it and a little green flag flying from the
top.

It was his first Christmas dinner and he thought of
his little brothers and sisters who were waiting in the
nursery, as he had often waited, till the pudding came.
The deep low collar and the Eton jacket made him feel
queer and oldish: and that morning when his mother had
brought him down to the parlour, dressed for mass, his
father had cried. That was because he was thinking
of his own father. And Uncle Charles had said so
too.

Mr Dedalus covered the dish and began to eat hungrily.
Then he said:

—Poor old Christy, he’s nearly lopsided now with
roguery.

[29]

—Simon, said Mrs Dedalus, you haven’t given Mrs
Riordan any sauce.

Mr Dedalus seized the sauceboat.

— Haven’t I? he cried. Mrs Riordan, pity the poor
blind.

Dante covered her plate with her hands and said:

—No, thanks.

Mr Dedalus turned to Uncle Charles.

—How are you off, sir?

—Right as the mail, Simon.

—You, John?

—I’m all right. Go on yourself.

—Mary? Here, Stephen, here’s something to make
your hair curl.

He poured sauce freely over Stephen’s plate and set
the boat again on the table. Then he asked Uncle
Charles was it tender. Uncle Charles could not speak
because his mouth was full but he nodded that it was.

—That was a good answer our friend made to the
canon. What? said Mr Dedalus.

—I didn’t think he had that much in him, said Mr
Casey.

—I’ll pay your dues, father, when you cease turning
the house of God into a polling-booth.

—A nice answer, said Dante, for any man calling
himself a catholic to give to his priest.

—They have only themselves to blame, said Mr
Dedalus suavely. If they took a fool’s advice they
would confine their attention to religion.

— It is religion, Dante said. They are doing their
duty in warning the people.

—We go to the house of God, Mr Casey said, in all

[30]

humility to pray to our Maker and not to hear election
addresses.

— It is religion, Dante said again. They are right.
They must direct their flocks.

—And preach politics from the altar, is it? asked Mr
Dedalus.

— Certainly, said Dante. It is a question of public
morality. A priest would not be a priest if he did not
tell his flock what is right and what is wrong.

Mrs Dedalus laid down her knife and fork, saying:

—For pity sake and for pity sake let us have no political
discussion on this day of all days in the year.

— Quite right, ma’am, said Uncle Charles. Now
Simon, that’s quite enough now. Not another word now.

—Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus quickly.
He uncovered the dish boldly and said:

—Now then, who’s for more turkey?

Nobody answered. Dante said:

— Nice language for any catholic to use!

—Mrs Riordan, I appeal to you, said Mrs Dedalus,
to let the matter drop now.

Dante turned on her and said:

— And am I to sit here and listen to the pastors of my
church being flouted?

—Nobody is saying a word against them, said Mr
Dedalus, so long as they don’t meddle in politics.

—The bishops and priests of Ireland have spoken, said
Dante, and they must be obeyed.

—Let them leave politics alone, said Mr Casey; or the
people may leave their church alone.

— You hear? said Dante turning to Mrs Dedalus.

— Mr Casey! Simon! said Mrs Dedalus, let it end now.

[31]
— Too bad! Too bad! said Uncle Charles.

— What? cried Mr Dedalus. Were we to desert him
at the bidding of the English people?

— He was no longer worthy to lead, said Dante. He
was a public sinner.

—We are all sinners and black sinners, said Mr Casey
coldly.

—Woe be to the man by whom the scandal cometh!
said Mrs Riordan. It would be better for him that a
millstone were tied about his neck and that he were cast
into the depths of the sea rather than that he should
scandalise one of these, my least little ones. That is the
language of the Holy Ghost.

— And very bad language if you ask me, said Mr
Dedalus coolly.

— Simon! Simon! said Uncle Charles. The boy.

—Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus. I meant about the
… I was thinking about the bad language of that
railway porter. Well now, that’s all right. Here,
Stephen, show me your plate, old chap. Eat away now.
Here.
He heaped up the food on Stephen’s plate and served
Uncle Charles and Mr Casey to large pieces of turkey
and splashes of sauce. Mrs Dedalus was eating little and
Dante sat with her hands in her lap. She was red in the
face. Mr Dedalus rooted with the carvers at the end of
the dish and said:

— There’s a tasty bit here we call the pope’s nose. If
any lady or gentleman…

He held a piece of fowl up on the prong of the carvingfork.
Nobody spoke. He put it on his own plate,
saying:

—Well, you can’t say but you were asked. I think I

[32]

had better eat it myself because I’m not well in my
health lately.

He winked at Stephen and, replacing the dish-cover,
began to eat again.

There was a silence while he ate. Then he said:

— Well now, the day kept up fine after all. There
were plenty of strangers down too.

Nobody spoke. He said again:

— I think there were more strangers down than last
Christmas.

He looked round at the others whose faces were bent
towards their plates and, receiving no reply, waited for
a moment and said bitterly:

—Well, my Christmas dinner has been spoiled anyhow.

— There could be neither luck nor grace, Dante said,
in a house where there is no respect for the pastors of
the church.

Mr Dedalus threw his knife and fork noisily on his
plate.

— Respect! he said. Is it for Billy with the lip or for
the tub of guts up in Armagh? Respect!

—Princes of the church, said Mr Casey with slow
scorn.

— Lord Leitrim’s coachman, yes, said Mr Dedalus.

— They are the Lord’s anointed, Dante said. They
are an honour to their country.

— Tub of guts, said Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a
handsome face, mind you, in repose. You should see
that fellow lapping up his bacon and cabbage of a cold
winter’s day. Johnny!

He twisted his features into a grimace of heavy bestiality
and made a lapping noise with his lips.

[33]

— Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before
Stephen. It’s not right.

— O, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, said
Dante hotly—the language he heard against God and
religion and priests in his own home.

—Let him remember too, cried Mr Casey to her from
across the table, the language with which the priests and
the priests’ pawns broke Parnell’s heart and hounded
him into his grave. Let him remember that too when he
grows up.

— Sons of bitches! cried Mr Dedalus. When he was
down they turned on him to betray him and rend him
like rats in a sewer. Lowlived dogs! And they look it!
By Christ, they look it!

— They behaved rightly, cried Dante. They obeyed
their bishops and their priests. Honour to them!

—Well, it is perfectly dreadful to say that not even
for one day in the year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be
free from these dreadful disputes!

Uncle Charles raised his hands mildly and said:

— Come now, come now, come now! Can we not have
our opinions whatever they are without this bad temper
and this bad language? It is too bad surely.

Mrs Dedalus spoke to Dante in a low voice but Dante
said loudly:

— I will not say nothing. I will defend my church
and my religion when it is insulted and spit on by renegade
catholics.

Mr Casey pushed his plate rudely into the middle of
the table and, resting his elbows before him, said in a
hoarse voice to his host:

— Tell me, did I tell you that story about a very famous
spit?

[34]

— You did not, John, said Mr Dedalus.

—Why then, said Mr Casey, it is a most instructive
story. It happened not long ago in the county Wicklow
where we are now.

He broke off and, turning towards Dante, said with
quiet indignation:

—And I may tell you, ma’am, that I, if you mean me,
am no renegade catholic. I am a catholic as my father
was and his father before him and his father before him
again when we gave up our lives rather than sell our
faith.

— The more shame to you now, Dante said, to speak
as you do.

—The story, John, said Mr Dedalus smiling. Let us
have the story anyhow.

— Catholic indeed! repeated Dante ironically. The
blackest protestant in the land would not speak the language
I have heard this evening.

Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning
like a country singer.

—I am no protestant, I tell you again, said Mr Casey
flushing.

Mr Dedalus, still crooning and swaying his head, began
to sing in a grunting nasal tone:

O, come all you Roman catholics
That never went to mass.

He took up his knife and fork again in good humour
and set to eating, saying to Mr Casey:

—Let us have the story, John. It will help us to
digest.

Stephen looked with affection at Mr Casey’s face which

[35]

stared across the table over his joined hands. He liked
to sit near him at the fire, looking up at his dark fierce
face. But his dark eyes were never fierce and his slow
voice was good to listen to. But why was he then
against the priests? Because Dante must be right then.
But he had heard his father say that she was a spoiled
nun and that she had come out of the convent in the
Alleghanies when her brother had got the money from
the savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps
that made her severe against Parnell. And she did not
like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protestant
and when she was young she knew children that used
to play with protestants and the protestants used to
make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. Tower of
Ivory, they used to say, House of Gold! How could a
woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who
was right then? And he remembered the evening in the
infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the
pierhead and the moan of sorrow from the people when
they had heard.

Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing
tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and
white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a
cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of
Ivory.

— The story is very short and sweet, Mr Casey said.
It was one day down in Arklow, a cold bitter day, not
long before the chief died. May God have mercy on
him!

He closed his eyes wearily and paused. Mr Dedalus
took a bone from his plate and tore some meat from it
with his teeth, saying:

—Before he was killed, you mean,

[36]

Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on:

— He was down in Arklow one day. We were down
there at a meeting and after the meeting was over we
had to make our way to the railway station through the
crowd. Such booing and baaing, man, you never heard.
They called us all the names in the world. Well there
was one old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was
surely, that paid all her attention to me. She kept
dancing along beside me in the mud bawling and screaming
into my face: Priest hunter! The Paris Funds!
Mr Fox! Kitty O’Shea!

—And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus.

— I let her bawl away, said Mr. Casey. It was a cold
day and to keep up my heart I had (saving your presence,
ma’am) a quid of Tullamore in my mouth and sure
I couldn’t say a word in any case because my mouth
was full of tobacco juice.

—Well, John?

—Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content,
Kitty O’Shea and the rest of it till at last she called that
lady a name that I won’t sully this Christmas board nor
your ears, ma’am, nor my own lips by repeating.

He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the
bone, asked:

— And what did you do, John?

—Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up
at me when she said it and I had my mouth full of tobacco
juice. I bent down to her and Phth! says I to
her like that.

He turned aside and made the act of spitting.

— Phth! says I to her like that, right into her eye.

He clapped a hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream
of pain.

[37]

— O Jesus, Mary and Joseph! says she. I’m blinded!
I’m blinded and drownded!

He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating:

—I’m blinded entirely.

Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair
while Uncle Charles swayed his head to and fro.
Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they
laughed:

—Very nice! Ha! Very nice!

It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye.
But what was the name the woman had called Kitty
O’Shea that Mr Casey would not repeat? He thought
of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of people and
making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he
had been in prison for and he remembered that one
night Sergeant O’Neill had come to the house and had
stood in the hall, talking in a low voice with his father
and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And
that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but
a car had come to the door and he had heard his father
say something about the Cabinteely road.

He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father:
and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the
esplanade she had hit a gentleman on the head with her
umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the band
played God save the Queen at the end.

Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.

—Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an
unfortunate priestridden race and always were and always
will be till the end of the chapter.

Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:

[38]

—A bad business! A bad business!

Mr Dedalus repeated:

— A priestridden Godforsaken race!

He pointed to the portrait of his grandfather on the
wall to his right.

—Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said.
He was a good Irishman when there was no money in the
job. He was condemned to death as a whiteboy. But
he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he would
never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.

Dante broke in angrily:

— If we are a priestridden race we ought to be proud
of it! They are the apple of God’s eye. Touch them
not, says Christ, for they are the apple of My eye.

—And can we not love our country then? asked Mr
Casey. Are we not to follow the man that was born to
lead us?

— A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor,
an adulterer! The priests were right to abandon him.
The priests were always the true friends of Ireland.

—Were they, faith? said Mr Casey.

He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily,
protruded one finger after another.

— Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time
of the union when Bishop Lanigan presented an address
of loyalty to the Marquess Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops
and priests sell the aspirations of their country in
1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they
denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the
confession box? And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of
Terence Bellew MacManus?

[39]

His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the
glow rise to his own cheek as the spoken words thrilled
him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw of coarse scorn.

— O, by God—he cried— I forgot little old Paul
Cullen! Another apple of God’s eye!

Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:

— Right! Right! They were always right! God and
morality and religion come first.

Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:

—Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.

— God and religion before everything! Dante cried.
God and religion before the world!

Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down
on the table with a crash.

—Very well, then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to
that, no God for Ireland!

—John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by
the coat sleeve.

Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr
Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the
table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes
with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.

—No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too
much God in Ireland. Away with God!

—Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to
her feet and almost spitting in his face.

Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back
into his chair again, talking to him from both sides reasonably.
He stared before him out of his dark flaming
eyes, repeating:

—Away with God, I say!

Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the
table, upsetting her napkinring which rolled slowly along

[40]

the carpet and came to rest against the foot of an easychair.
Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed her towards
the door. At the door Dante turned round violently
and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed
and quivering with rage:

—Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to
death! Fiend!

The door slammed behind her.

Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly
bowed his head on his hands with a sob of pain.

—Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!

He sobbed loudly and bitterly.

Stephen, raising his terrorstricken face, saw that his
father’s eyes were full of tears.

****

The fellows talked together in little groups.
One fellow said:

— They were caught near the Hill of Lyons.

—Who caught them?

—Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car.

The same fellow added:

—A fellow in the higher line told me.
Fleming asked:

— But why did they run away, tell us?

—I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had
fecked cash out of the rector’s room.

—Who fecked it?

—Kickham’s brother. And they all went shares in it.

But that was stealing. How could they have done
that?

—A fat lot you know about it, Thunder! Wells said.
I know why they scut.

[41]

—Tell us why.

— I was told not to, Wells said.

— O, go on, Wells, all said. You might tell us. We
won’t let it out.

Stephen bent forward his head to hear. Wells looked
round to see if anyone was coming. Then he said secretly:

—You know the altar wine they keep in the press in
the sacristy?

—Yes.

—Well, they drank that and it was found out who did
it by the smell. And that’s why they ran away, if you
want to know.

And the fellow who had spoken first said:

—Yes, that’s what I heard too from the fellow in the
higher line.

The fellows were all silent. Stephen stood among
them, afraid to speak, listening. A faint sickness of
awe made him feel weak. How could they have done
that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There
were dark wooden presses there where the crimped surplices
lay quietly folded. It was not the chapel but still
you had to speak under your breath. It was a holy
place. He remembered the summer evening he had been
there to be dressed as boat-bearer, the evening of the
procession to the little altar in the wood. A strange and
holy place. The boy that held the censer had swung it
gently to and fro near the door with the silvery cap
lifted by the middle chain to keep the coals lighting.
That was called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as
the fellow had swung it gently and had given off a weak
sour smell. And then when all were vested he had stood
holding out the boat to the rector and the rector had

[42]

put a spoonful of incense in and it had hissed on the
red coals.

The fellows were talking together in little groups here
and there on the playground. The fellows seemed to
him to have grown smaller: that was because a sprinter
had knocked him down the day before, a fellow out of
second of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow’s
machine lightly on the cinderpath and his spectacles
had been broken in three pieces and some of the
grit of the cinders had gone into his mouth.
That was why the fellows seemed to him smaller and
farther away and the goalposts so thin and far and the
soft grey sky so high up. But there was no play on
the football grounds for cricket was coming: and some
said that Barnes would be the prof and some said it
would be Flowers. And all over the playgrounds they
were playing rounders and bowling twisters and lobs.
And from here and from there came the sounds of the
cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick,
pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a fountain
slowly falling in the brimming bowl.

Athy, who had been silent, said quietly:

—You are all wrong.

All turned towards him eagerly.

—Why?

—Do you know?

—Who told you?

— Tell us, Athy.

Athy pointed across the playground to where Simon
Moonan was walking by himself kicking a stone before
him.

—Ask him, he said.
The fellows looked there and then said:

[43]

—Why him?

— Is he in it?

Athy lowered his voice and said:

—Do you know why those fellows scut? I will tell
you but you must not let on you know.

— Tell us, Athy. Go on. You might if you know.

He paused for a moment and then said mysteriously:

— They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker
Boyle in the square one night.

The fellows looked at him and asked:

— Caught? —What doing?

Athy said:

— Smugging.

All the fellows were silent: and Athy said:

— And that’s why?

Stephen looked at the faces of the fellows but they
were all looking across the playground. He wanted to
ask somebody about it. What did that mean about the
smugging in the square? Why did the five fellows out
of the higher line run away for that? It was a joke, he
thought. Simon Moonan had nice clothes and one night
he had shown him a ball of creamy sweets that the fellows
of the football fifteen had rolled down to him along
the carpet in the middle of the refectory when he was
at the door. It was the night of the match against the
Bective Rangers and the ball was made just like a red
and green apple only it opened and it was full of the
creamy sweets. And one day Boyle had said that an
elephant had two tuskers instead of two tusks and that
was why he was called Tusker Boyle but some fellows
called him Lady Boyle because he was always at his
nails, paring them.

[44]

Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she
was a girl. They were like ivory; only soft. That was
the meaning of Tower of Ivory but protestants could not
understand it and made fun of it. One day he had stood
beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was
running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox
terrier was scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn.
She had put her hand into his pocket where his hand was
and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand was.
She had said that pockets were funny things to have:
and then all of a sudden she had broken away and had
run laughing down the sloping curve of the path. Her
fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the
sun. Tower of Ivory. House of Gold. By thinking of
things you could understand them.

But why in the square? You went there when you
wanted to do something. It was all thick slabs of slate
and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there
was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind the
door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red
pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick
in each hand and underneath was the name of the
drawing:

Balbus was building a wall.

Some fellows had drawn it there for a cod. It had a
funny face but it was very like a man with a beard. And
on the wall of another closet there was written in backhand
in beautiful writing:

Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly.

Perhaps that was why they were there because it was
a place where some fellows wrote things for cod. But
all the same it was queer what Athy said and the way
he said it. It was not a cod because they had run away.

[45]

He looked with the others across the playground and
began to feel afraid.

At last Fleming said:

—And we are all to be punished for what other fellows
did?

— I won’t come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said.
Three days’ silence in the refectory and sending us up
for six and eight every minute.

—Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way
of twisting the note so that you can’t open it and fold
it again to see how many ferulae you are to get. I won’t
come back too.

—Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies
was in second of grammar this morning.

—Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we?

All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent
and you could hear the cricket bats but more slowly than
before: pick, pock.

Wells asked:

—What is going to be done to them?

— Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged,
Athy said, and the fellows in the higher line got their
choice of flogging or being expelled.

—And which are they taking? asked the fellow who
had spoken first.

— All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered.
He’s going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.

— I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and
the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off
after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college
is known all his life on account of it. Besides
Gleeson won’t flog him hard.

— It’s best of his play not to, Fleming said.

[46]

— I wouldn’t like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker,
Cecil Thunder said. But I don’t believe they will be
flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up for twice nine.

—No, no, said Athy. They’ll both get it on the vital
spot.

Wells rubbed himself and said in a crying voice:

— Please, sir, let me off!

Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket,
saying:

It can’t be helped;
It must be done.
So down with your breeches
And out with your bum.

The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little
afraid. In the silence of the soft grey air he heard the
cricket bats from here and from there: pock. That was
a sound to hear but if you were hit then you would feel
a pain. The pandybat made a sound too but not like
that. The fellows said it was made of whalebone and
leather with lead inside: and he wondered what was the
pain like. There were different kinds of sounds. A
long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he
wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery
to think of it and cold: and what Athy said too. But
what was there to laugh at in it? It made him shivery:
but that was because you always felt like a shiver when
you let down your trousers. It was the same in the
bath when you undressed yourself. He wondered who
had to let them down, the master or the boy himself.
O how could they laugh about it that way?

He looked at Athy’s rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky
hands. He had rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr

[47]

Gleeson would roll up his sleeves. But Mr Gleeson had
round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish
white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed.
Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they
were terribly long and pointed nails. So long and cruel
they were though the white fattish hands were not cruel
but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and
fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high
whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at
the end of your shirt when you undressed yourself yet
he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to
think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and
gentle. And he thought of what Cecil Thunder had
said; that Mr Gleeson would not flog Corrigan hard.
And Fleming had said he would not because it was best
of his play not to. But that was not why.

A voice from far out on the playground cried:

—All in!

And other voices cried:

— All in! All in!

During the writing lesson he sat with his arms folded,
listening to the slow scraping of the pens. Mr Harford
went to and fro making little signs in red pencil and
sometimes sitting beside the boy to show him how to
hold his pen. He had tried to spell out the headline for
himself though he knew already what it was for it was
the last of the book. Zeal without prudence is like a
ship adrift. But the lines of the letters were like fine
invisible threads and it was only by closing his right eye
tight tight and staring out of the left eye that he could
make out the full curves of the capital.

But Mr Harford was very decent and never got into a
wax. All the other masters got into dreadful waxes.

[48]

But why were they to suffer for what fellows in the
higher line did? Wells had said that they had drunk
some of the altar wine out of the press in the sacristy
and that it had been found out who had done it by the
smell. Perhaps they had stolen a monstrance to run
away with it and sell it somewhere. That must have
been a terrible sin, to go in there quietly at night, to
open the dark press and steal the flashing gold thing
into which God was put on the altar in the middle of
flowers and candles at benediction while the incense went
up in clouds at both sides as the fellow swung the censer
and Dominic Kelly sang the first part by himself in the
choir. But God was not in it of course when they stole
it. But still it was a strange and a great sin even to
touch it. He thought of it with deep awe; a terrible
and strange sin: it thrilled him to think of it in the
silence when the pens scraped lightly. But to drink the
altar wine out of the press and be found out by the smell
was a sin too: but it was not terrible and strange. It
only made you feel a little sickish on account of the
smell of the wine. Because on the day when he had
made his first holy communion in the chapel he had shut
his eyes and opened his mouth and put out his tongue
a little: and when the rector had stooped down to give
him the holy communion he had smelt a faint winy smell
off the rector’s breath after the wine of the mass. The
word was beautiful: wine. It made you think of dark
purple because the grapes were dark purple that grew
in Greece outside houses like white temples. But the
faint smell off the rector’s breath had made him feel a
sick feeling on the morning of his first communion. The
day of your first communion was the happiest day of
your life. And once a lot of generals had asked Napo-

[49]

leon what was the happiest day of his life. They thought
he would say the day he won some great battle or the
day he was made an emperor. But he said:

— Gentlemen, the happiest day of my life was the day
on which I made my first holy communion.

Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and
he remained still leaning on the desk with his arms
folded. Father Arnall gave out the theme-books and
he said that they were scandalous and that they were all
to be written out again with the corrections at once.
But the worst of all was Fleming’s theme because the
pages were stuck together by a blot: and Father Arnall
held it up by a corner and said it was an insult to any
master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked
Jack Lawton to decline the noun mare and Jack Lawton
stopped at the ablative singular and could not go on with
the plural.

— You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father
Arnall sternly. You, the leader of the class!

Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next.
Nobody knew. Father Arnall became very quiet, more
and more quiet as each boy tried to answer it and could
not. But his face was black looking and his eyes were
staring though his voice was so quiet. Then he asked
Fleming and Fleming said that that word had no plural.
Father Arnall suddenly shut the book and shouted at
him:

—Kneel out there in the middle of the class. You
are one of the idlest boys I ever met. Copy out your
themes again the rest of you.

Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt between
the two last benches. The other boys bent over
their theme-books and began to write. A silence filled

[50]

the classroom and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father
Arnall’s dark face, saw that it was a little red from the
wax he was in.

Was that a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or
was he allowed to get into a wax when the boys were
idle because that made them study better or was he only
letting on to be in a wax? It was because he was allowed
because a priest would know what a sin was and
would not do it. But if he did it one time by mistake
what would he do to go to confession? Perhaps he
would go to confession to the minister. And if the minister
did it he would go to the rector: and the rector to
the provincial: and the provincial to the general of the
jesuits. That was called the order: and he had heard his
father say that they were all clever men. They could
all have become high-up people in the world if they had
not become jesuits. And he wondered what Father
Arnall and Paddy Barrett would have become and what
Mr McGlade and Mr Gleeson would have become if they
had not become jesuits. It was hard to think what because
you would have to think of them in a different
way with different coloured coats and trousers and with
beards and moustaches and different kinds of hats.

The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper
ran through the class: the prefect of studies. There was
an instant of dead silence and then the loud crack of a
pandybat on the last desk. Stephen’s heart leapt up
in fear.

—Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried
the prefect of studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want
flogging in this class?

He came to the middle of the class and saw Fleming
on his knees.

[51]

— Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on
his knees? What is your name, boy?

—Fleming, sir.

— Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see
it in your eye. Why is he on his knees, Father Arnall?

— He wrote a bad Latin theme. Father Arnall said,
and he missed all the questions in grammar.

— Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of
course he did! A born idler! I can see it in the corner
of his eye.

He banged his pandybat down on the desk and cried:

—Up, Fleming! Up, my boy!

Fleming stood up slowly.

— Hold out! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming held out his hand. The pandybat came down
on it with a loud smacking sound: one, two, three, four,
five, six.

— Other hand!

The pandybat came down again in six loud quick
smacks.

—Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming knelt down squeezing his hands under his
armpits, his face contorted with pain, but Stephen knew
how hard his hands were because Fleming was always
rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great
pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible.

Stephen’s heart was beating and fluttering.

—At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of
studies. We want no lazy idle loafers here, lazy idle
little schemers. At your work, I tell you. Father
Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan
will be in tomorrow.

[52]

He poked one of the boys in the side with the pandybat,
saying:

— You, boy! When will Father Dolan be in again?

— Tomorrow, sir, said Tom Furlong’s voice.

— Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, said the
prefect of studies. Make up your minds for that.
Every day Father Dolan. Write away. You, boy, who
are you?

Stephen’s heart jumped suddenly.

— Dedalus, sir.

—Why are you not writing like the others?

—I… my…

He could not speak with fright.

—Why is he not writing, Father Arnall?

— He broke his glasses, said Father Arnall, and I
exempted him from work.

—Broke? What is this I hear? What is this?
Your name is? said the prefect of studies.

—Dedalus, sir.

— Out here, Dedalus. Lazy little schemer. I see
schemer in your face. Where did you break your
glasses?

Stephen stumbled into the middle of the class, blinded
by fear and haste.

—Where did you break your glasses? repeated the
prefect of studies.

— The cinderpath, sir.

—Hoho! The cinderpath! cried the prefect of
studies. I know that trick.

Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment
Father Dolan’s whitegrey not young face, his
baldy whitegrey head with fluff at the sides of it, the
steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes look-

[53]

ing through the glasses. Why did he say he knew that
trick?

—Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies.
Broke my glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with
your hand this moment!

Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his
trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the
prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers
to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the
soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot
burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a
broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together
like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the pain
scalding tears were driven into his eyes. His whole
body was shaking with fright, his arm was shaking and
his crumpled burning livid hand shook like a loose leaf
in the air. A cry sprang to his lips, a prayer to be let
off. But though the tears scalded his eyes and his limbs
quivered with pain and fright he held back the hot tears
and the cry that scalded his throat.

— Other hand! shouted the prefect of studies.

Stephen drew back his maimed and quivering right
arm and held out his left hand. The soutane sleeve
swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud
crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning
pain made his hand shrink together with the palms and
fingers in a livid quivering mass. The scalding water
burst forth from his eyes and, burning with shame and
agony and fear, he drew back his shaking arm in terror
and burst out into a whine of pain. His body shook
with a palsy of fright and in shame and rage he felt the
scalding cry come from his throat and the scalding tears
falling out of his eyes and down his flaming cheeks.

[54]

— Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.

Stephen knelt down quickly pressing his beaten hands
to his sides. To think of them beaten and swollen with
pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them
as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he
felt sorry for. And as he knelt, calming the last sobs
in his throat and feeling the burning tingling pain
pressed in to his sides, he thought of the hands which
he had held out in the air with the palms up and of the
firm touch of the prefect of studies when he had steadied
the shaking fingers and of the beaten swollen reddened
mass of palm and fingers that shook helplessly in the air.

— Get at your work, all of you, cried the prefect of
studies from the door. Father Dolan will be in every
day to see if any boy, any lazy idle little loafer wants
flogging. Every day. Every day.

The door closed behind him.

The hushed class continued to copy out the themes.
Father Arnall rose from his seat and went among them,
helping the boys with gentle words and telling them the
mistakes they had made. His voice was very gentle and
soft. Then he returned to his seat and said to Fleming
and Stephen:

—You may return to your places, you two.

Fleming and Stephen rose and, walking to their seats,
sat down. Stephen, scarlet with shame, opened a book
quickly with one weak hand and bent down upon it, his
face close to the page.

It was unfair and cruel because the doctor had told
him not to read without glasses and he had written home
to his father that morning to send him a new pair. And
Father Arnall had said that he need not study till the
new glasses came. Then to be called a schemer before

[55]

the class and to be pandied when he always got the card
for first or second and was the leader of the Yorkists!
How could the prefect of studies know that it was a
trick? He felt the touch of the prefect’s fingers as
they had steadied his hand and at first he had thought
he was going to shake hands with him because the fingers
were soft and firm: but then in an instant he had heard
the swish of the soutane sleeve and the crash. It was
cruel and unfair to make him kneel in the middle of the
class then: and Father Arnall had told them both that
they might return to their places without making any
difference between them. He listened to Father Arnall’s
low and gentle voice as he corrected the themes. Perhaps
he was sorry now and wanted to be decent. But
it was unfair and cruel. The prefect of studies was a
priest but that was cruel and unfair. And his whitegrey
face and the no-coloured eyes behind the steel
rimmed spectacles were cruel looking because he had
steadied the hand first with his firm soft fingers and
that was to hit it better and louder.

—It’s a stinking mean thing, that’s what it is, said
Fleming in the corridor as the classes were passing out
in file to the refectory, to pandy a fellow for what is not
his fault.

—You really broke your glasses by accident, didn’t
you? Nasty Roche asked.

Stephen felt his heart filled by Fleming’s words and
did not answer.

— Of course he did! said Fleming. I wouldn’t stand
it. I’d go up and tell the rector on him.

—Yes, said Cecil Thunder eagerly, and I saw him
lift the pandybat over his shoulder and he’s not allowed
to do that.

[56]

—Did they hurt much? Nasty Roche asked.

—Very much, Stephen said.

—I wouldn’t stand it, Fleming repeated, from Baldyhead
or any other Baldyhead. It’s a stinking mean low
trick, that’s what it is. I’d go straight up to the rector
and tell him about it after dinner.

—Yes, do. Yes, do, said Cecil Thunder.

—Yes, do. Yes, go up and tell the rector on him,
Dedalus, said Nasty Roche, because he said that he’d
come in tomorrow again and pandy you.

—Yes, yes. Tell the rector, all said.

And there were some fellows out of second of grammar
listening and one of them said:

— The senate and the Roman people declared that
Dedalus had been wrongly punished.

It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel: and, as he sat
in the refectory, he suffered time after time in memory
the same humiliation until he began to wonder whether
it might not really be that there was something in his
face which made him look like a schemer and he wished
he had a little mirror to see. But there could not be;
and it was unjust and cruel and unfair.

He could not eat the blackish fish fritters they got on
Wednesdays in Lent and one of his potatoes had the
mark of the spade in it. Yes, he would do what the
fellows had told him. He would go up and tell the
rector that he had been wrongly punished. A thing like
that had been done before by somebody in history, by
some great person whose head was in the books of history.
And the rector would declare that he had been
wrongly punished because the senate and the Roman
people always declared that the men who did that had
been wrongly punished. Those were the great men

[57]

whose names were in Richmal Magnall’s Questions.
History was all about those men and what they did and
that was what Peter Parley’s Tales about Greece and
Rome were all about. Peter Parley himself was on the
first page in a picture. There was a road over a heath
with grass at the side and little bushes: and Peter Parley
had a broad hat like a protestant minister and a big
stick and he was walking fast along the road to Greece
and Rome.

It was easy what he had to do. All he had to do
was when the dinner was over and he came out in his
turn to go on walking but not out to the corridor but up
the staircase on the right that led to the castle. He had
nothing to do but that; to turn to the right and walk
fast up the staircase and in half a minute he would be
in the low dark narrow corridor that led through the
castle to the rector’s room. And every fellow had said
that it was unfair, even the fellow out of second of
grammar who had said that about the senate and the
Roman people.

What would happen? He heard the fellows of the
higher line stand up at the top of the refectory and heard
their steps as they came down the matting: Paddy Rath
and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard and the Portuguese
and the fifth was big Corrigan who was going to be
flogged by Mr Gleeson. That was why the prefect of
studies had called him a schemer and pandied him for
nothing: and, straining his weak eyes, tired with the
tears, he watched big Corrigan’s broad shoulders and
big hanging black head passing in the file. But he had
done something and besides Mr Gleeson would not flog
him hard: and he remembered how big Corrigan looked
in the bath. He had skin the same colour as the turf-

[58]

coloured bogwater in the shallow end of the bath and
when he walked along the side his feet slapped loudly
on the wet tiles and at every step his thighs shook a
little because he was fat.

The refectory was half empty and the fellows were
still passing out in file. He could go up the staircase
because there was never a priest or a prefect outside
the refectory door. But he could not go. The rector
would side with the prefect of studies and think it was
a schoolboy trick and then the prefect of studies would
come in every day the same, only it would be worse because
he would be dreadfully waxy at any fellow going
up to the rector about him. The fellows had told him
to go but they would not go themselves. They had
forgotten all about it. No, it was best to forget all
about it and perhaps the prefect of studies had only
said he would come in. No, it was best to hide out of
the way because when you were small and young you
could often escape that way.

The fellows at his table stood up. He stood up and
passed out among them in the file. He had to decide.
He was coming near the door. If he went on with the
fellows he could never go up to the rector because he
could not leave the playground for that. And if he
went and was pandied all the same all the fellows would
make fun and talk about young Dedalus going up to the
rector to tell on the prefect of studies.

He was walking down along the matting and he saw
the door before him. It was impossible: he could not.
He thought of the baldy head of the prefect of studies
with the cruel no-coloured eyes looking at him and he
heard the voice of the prefect of studies asking him
twice what his name was. Why could he not remember

[59]

the name when he was told the first time? Was he not
listening the first time or was it to make fun out of the
name? The great men in the history had names like
that and nobody made fun of them. It was his own
name that he should have made fun of if he wanted to
make fun. Dolan: it was like the name of a woman who
washed clothes.

He had reached the door and, turning quickly up to
the right, walked up the stairs; and, before he could
make up his mind to come back, he had entered the low
dark narrow corridor that led to the castle. And as he
crossed the threshold of the door of the corridor he saw,
without turning his head to look, that all the fellows
were looking after him as they went filing by.

He passed along the narrow dark corridor, passing
little doors that were the doors of the rooms of the community.
He peered in front of him and right and left
through the gloom and thought that those must be
portraits. It was dark and silent and his eyes were
weak and tired with tears so that he could not see. But
he thought they were the portraits of the saints and
great men of the order who were looking down on him
silently as he passed: Saint Ignatius Loyola holding an
open book and pointing to the words Ad Majorem Dei
Gloriam in it, saint Francis Xavier pointing to his chest,
Lorenzo Ricci with his berretta on his head like one of
the prefects of the lines, the three patrons of holy youth,
saint Stanislaus Kostka, saint Aloysius Gonzaga and
Blessed John Berchmans, all with young faces because
they died when they were young, and Father Peter
Kenny sitting in a chair wrapped in a big cloak.

He came out on the landing above the entrance hall
and looked about him. That was where Hamilton

[60]

Rowan had passed and the marks of the soldiers’ slugs
were there. And it was there that the old servants had
seen the ghost in the white cloak of a marshal.

An old servant was sweeping at the end of the landing.
He asked him where was the rector’s room and the
old servant pointed to the door at the far end and looked
after him as he went on to it and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked again more loudly
and his heart jumped when he heard a muffled voice say:

— Come in!

He turned the handle and opened the door and
fumbled for the handle of the green baize door inside.
He found it and pushed it open and went in.

He saw the rector sitting at a desk writing. There
was a skull on the desk and a strange solemn smell in
the room like the old leather of chairs.

His heart was beating fast on account of the solemn
place he was in and the silence of the room: and he
looked at the skull and at the rector’s kind-looking face.

—Well, my little man, said the rector, what is it?

Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and
said:

—I broke my glasses, sir.

The rector opened his mouth and said:

— O!

Then he smiled and said:

—Well, if we broke our glasses we must write home
for a new pair.

— I wrote home, sir, said Stephen, and Father Arnall
said I am not to study till they come.

— Quite right! said the rector.

Stephen swallowed down the thing again and tried to
keep his legs and his voice from shaking.

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—But, sir…

—Yes?

—Father Dolan came in today and pandied me because
I was not writing my theme.

The rector looked at him in silence and he could feel
the blood rising to his face and the tears about to rise
to his eyes.

The rector said:

—Your name is Dedalus, isn’t it?

—Yes, sir. — And where did you break your glasses?

— On the cinderpath, sir. A fellow was coming out
of the bicycle house and I fell and they got broken. I
don’t know the fellow’s name.

The rector looked at him again in silence. Then he
smiled and said:

— O, well, it was a mistake, I am sure Father Dolan
did not know.

—But I told him I broke them, sir, and he pandied
me.

—Did you tell him that you had written home for a
new pair? the rector asked.

—No, sir.

— Well then, said the rector. Father Dolan did not
understand. You can say that I excuse you from your
lessons for a few days.

Stephen said quickly for fear his trembling would
prevent him:

—Yes, sir, but Father Dolan said he will come in tomorrow
to pandy me again for it.

—Very well, the rector said, it is a mistake and I
shall speak to Father Dolan myself. Will that do
now?

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Stephen felt the tears wetting his eyes and murmured:

— O yes sir, thanks.

The rector held his hand across the side of the desk
where the skull was and Stephen, placing his hand in it
for a moment, felt a cool moist palm.

— Good day now, said the rector, withdrawing his
hand and bowing.

— Good day, sir, said Stephen.

He bowed and walked quietly out of the room, closing
the doors carefully and slowly.

But when he had passed the old servant on the landing
and was again in the low narrow dark corridor he
began to walk faster and faster. Faster and faster he
hurried on through the gloom excitedly. He bumped
his elbow against the door at the end and, hurrying down
the staircase, walked quickly through the two corridors
and out into the air.

He could hear the cries of the fellows on the playgrounds.
He broke into a run and, running quicker and
quicker, ran across the cinderpath and reached the third
line playground, panting.

The fellows had seen him running. They closed round
him in a ring, pushing one against another to hear.

— Tell us! Tell us!

—What did he say?

— Did you go in?

—What did he say?

— Tell us! Tell us!

He told them what he had said and what the rector
had said and, when he had told them, all the fellows
flung their caps spinning up into the air and cried:

— Hurroo!

[63]

They caught their caps and sent them up again spinning
skyhigh and cried again:

—Hurroo! Hurroo!

They made a cradle of their locked hands and hoisted
him up among them and carried him along till he
struggled to get free. And when he had escaped from
them they broke away in all directions, flinging their
caps again into the air and whistling as they went spinning
up and crying:

—Hurroo!

And they gave three groans for Baldyhead Dolan and
three cheers for Conmee and they said he was the decentest
rector that was ever in Clongowes.

The cheers died away in the soft grey air. He was
alone. He was happy and free: but he would not be
anyway proud with Father Dolan. He would be very
quiet and obedient: and he wished that he could do something
kind for him to show him that he was not proud.
The air was soft and grey and mild and evening was
coming. There was the smell of evening in the air, the
smell of the fields in the country where they digged up
turnips to peel them and eat them when they went out
for a walk to Major Barton’s, the smell there was in the
little wood beyond the pavilion where the gallnuts were.

The fellows were practising long shies and bowling
lobs and slow twisters. In the soft grey silence he could
hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from
there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats:
pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain
falling softly in the brimming bowl.

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CHAPTER TWO

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