Gemini.Finnegans.Wake.40

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Your fame is spreading like Basilico’s ointment since the Fintan Lalors piped you overborder and there’s whole households beyond the Bothnians and they calling names after you. The menhere’s always talking of you sitting around on the pig’s cheeks under the sacred rooftree, over the bowls of memory where every hollow holds a hallow, with a pledge till the drengs, in the Salmon House.

The mourners are now flattering the risen Finnegan, assuring him that even in death, his fame is growing and he is being honoured as a hero. They are trying to convince him that his legacy is so glorious that he should be content to rest.

## A Spreading Legend 🌍

They begin by telling him his fame is spreading internationally, making his local story a universal one.

  • “Your fame is spreading like Basilico’s ointment…”: His reputation is spreading like a well-known, curative, and almost sacred ointment (from “basilica,” a great church).
  • “…since the Fintan Lalors piped you overborder…”: James Fintan Lalor was a famous Irish land reformer and revolutionary. His name here represents all the storytellers and rebels who have taken Finnegan’s story and “piped” it across borders, turning him into a symbol of Ireland.
  • “…beyond the Bothnians…”: They claim households in far-off, exotic places (the Gulf of Bothnia is between Finland and Sweden) are naming their children after him. This hyperbole emphasizes how his legend has become universal.

## Honoured at Home 🍻

They then contrast this international fame with the intimate, reverent way he is remembered by the local men.

  • “The menhere’s always talking of you…”: This is a pun on “the men here” and the Dutch Mijnheers (“Sirs”). The local men, the gentlemen of the pub, are constantly telling his story.
  • “…sitting around on the pig’s cheeks under the sacred rooftree…”: This creates a cozy, earthy image of a pub. The “pig’s cheeks” are stools or a meal, and the “sacred rooftree” (the central beam of a house) elevates the pub to a holy place, a temple where his memory is worshipped.

## The Sacred Ritual of Memory 🙏

The act of drinking and telling stories in the pub is transformed into a sacred rite.

  • “…over the bowls of memory where every hollow holds a hallow…”: This beautiful line means that the very act of remembering him makes everything sacred. The “bowls” are their cups of drink, which become vessels for memory, and every empty space (“hollow”) is filled with holiness (“hallow”).
  • “…with a pledge till the drengs…”: They toast him to the last drop, the “dregs.” “Drengs” is also an Old Norse word for a warrior, so they are like loyal soldiers toasting their fallen chieftain.

## The Salmon House mythological pub 🐟

The paragraph ends by naming the place where all this happens, and the name is deeply significant in Irish myth.

  • “in the Salmon House.”: This is the name of HCE’s pub. It’s a direct reference to the Salmon of Knowledge (An Bradán Feasa), a fish in Irish mythology that held all the wisdom in the world. By placing his story in “the Salmon House,” Joyce transforms a simple Dublin pub into a mythological source of all knowledge, the very place where the meaning of the fallen hero’s life and death is kept and understood.

08/09/2025, P25.15, to be continued.