Gemini.Finnegans.Wake.28
And that was how the skirtmisshes began. But the dour handworded her grace in dootch nossow: Shut! So her grace o’malice kidsnapped up the jiminy Tristopher and into the shandy westerness she rain, rain, rain. And Jarl van Hoother warlessed after her with soft dovesgall: Stop deef stop come back to my earin stop. But she swaradid to him: Unlikelihud. And there was a brannewail that same sabboath night of falling angles somewhere in Erio. And the prankquean went for her forty years’ walk in Tourlemonde and she washed the blessings of the lovespots off the jiminy with soap sulliver suddles and she had her four owlers masters for to tauch him his tickles and she convorted him to the onesure allgood and he become a luderman. So then she started to rain and to rain and, be redtom, she was back again at Jarl van Hoother’s in a brace of samers and the jiminy with her in her pinafrond, lace at night, at another time. And where did she come but to the bar of his bristolry. And jarl von Hoother had his baretholobruised heels drowned in his cellarmalt, shaking warm hands with himself and the jimminy hilary and the dummy in their first infancy were below on the tearsheet, wringing and coughing, like brodar and histher.
This paragraph launches into the fable of the Jarl, the prankquean, and the two sons, using a famous Dublin legend as its template. This is the story of the first great “skirt-skirmish.”
The Kidnapping
The Jarl’s door (dour) slams Shut! in the prankquean’s face. Her response is swift and dramatic.
So her grace o’malice kidsnapped up the jiminy Tristopher and into the shandy westerness she rain, rain, rain.
Her grace o'malice is a pun on Grace O’Malley, the legendary 16th-century Irish pirate queen. In a famous story, when the lord of Howth Castle refused her entry, she abducted his young heir in retaliation. Joyce is retelling this local Dublin legend. Here, the prankquean kidnaps Tristopher, the sad, artistic twin who represents Shem. The Jarl’s desperate telegram—Stop deef stop come back to my earin stop (“Stop, thief, stop, come back to my Erin/Ireland, stop”)—is met with a firm refusal: Unlikelihud.
The Transformation
The prankquean takes Tristopher on a forty-year tour of the world (Tourlemonde). During this exile, he is educated by the four owlers masters (a pun on the Four Masters, the great annalists of Irish history). She cleanses him of his “love spots” (original sin) and converts him, so that he become a luderman (a Lutheran).
In essence, the mother/disruptor figure takes the sensitive artist son away from the father’s world, exposes him to all of history, and turns him into a “heretic”—someone with a new, rebellious perspective.
The Return
When the prankquean finally returns with the transformed Tristopher, the scene at the Jarl’s keep has changed completely. The Jarl is no longer isolated in his lonely lighthouse. Instead, he’s in a pub, his baretholobruised heels drowned in his cellarmalt. The prankquean’s raid has forced him out of his sterile isolation and into the messy, communal world of the pub.
Meanwhile, the other twin, Hilary (the conformist, Shaun), is on the floor crying with the dummy (an effigy of the mother), deeply upset by the disruption to his orderly world.
This fable explains the origin of the two brothers’ opposition. One (Shem) has been exiled, educated by a female force, and turned into a worldly heretic. The other (Shaun) has stayed home, loyal to the father’s world, but is left weeping and insecure. The prankquean has created the fundamental conflict that will drive the rest of the book.
27/08/2025, P.22.02, to be continued.