Gemini.Finnegans.Wake.46

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Drop in your tracks, babe! Be not unrasted! The headboddyl watcher of the chempel of Isid, Tocumcalmum, saith: I know thee, metherjar, I know thee, salvation boat. For we have performed upon thee, thou abramanation, who comest ever without being invoked whose coming ins unknown, all the things which the company of the precentors and of the grammarians of Christpatrick’s ordered concerning thee in the matter of the work of thy tombing. Howe of the shipmen, steep wall!

This paragraph is a formal, ritualistic incantation spoken over the resting body of HCE/Finnegan. The tone shifts from the celebratory salute of the previous paragraph to a solemn, magical rite, drawing heavily on the language of the Egyptian Book of the Dead to ensure the corpse remains peacefully entombed.

## A Command to Rest 🙏

The passage opens with a direct command to the corpse: “Drop in your tracks, babe! Be not unrasted!” This is an instruction to stay dead and not become a restless spirit. It’s an inversion of “Rest in Peace,” actively commanding the body not to be “un-rested.”

## The Guardian of the Dead ☥

The speaker is identified as a priestly guardian figure with a magical-sounding name and title.

  • His Name: “Tocumcalmum,” a pun on the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun and the English phrase “talk ‘em calm.” His purpose is to pacify the dead with his words.
  • His Title: He is the “headboddyl watcher of the chempel of Isid.” This means he’s the chief guardian of the corpse (“head body watcher”) in the “chapel of Isis.” Isis is the Egyptian goddess who resurrected her husband, Osiris, and this reference firmly places the entire ritual within the world of Egyptian funerary magic. It also puns on Chapelizod, HCE’s home suburb in Dublin.

## The Sacred Vessel 🏺

The guardian addresses the corpse with ritual names, a key feature of the Book of the Dead. HCE’s body/coffin is identified as two things:

  1. “metherjar”: A “mother-jar,” a vessel of life. This also refers to a mether, a traditional Irish communal drinking cup, bringing the Egyptian rite back to a local Irish wake.
  2. “salvation boat”: In Egyptian myth, the sun god Ra travels through the underworld in a boat. The corpse is identified with this sacred vessel, destined to carry life through darkness towards rebirth.

## The Rites are Complete 📜

A long, formal sentence confirms that all the proper funeral rites have been performed according to the highest authorities (“the grammarians of Christpatrick’s”—a fusion of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Christ, and academic grammarians). They have done this to control the corpse, whom they call an “abramanation” (a paradoxical fusion of “abomination” and the patriarch “Abraham”), acknowledging his dual nature as both a cursed sinner and a revered founder.

## The Tomb as a Landmark 🏞️

The incantation ends with a final, powerful address to the body, now fully integrated into the Dublin landscape.

  • “Howe of the shipmen, steep wall!”: “Howe” is an Old Norse word for a burial mound, but it’s also the Hill of Howth, the headland north of Dublin Bay that resembles a sleeping giant. The “shipmen” are the Viking founders of Dublin. The sentence permanently fixes HCE’s body as the landscape itself: he is the ancient burial mound of the city’s founders, a permanent landmark, a “steep wall” protecting the bay. For you in Malahide at this early hour, the sight of the real Hill of Howth across the water makes this image incredibly vivid and immediate.

14/09/2025, P26.24 , to be continued.