Shem is as short for Shemus as Jem is joky for Jacob. A few toughnecks are still getatable who pretend that aboriginally he was of respectable stemming (he was an outlex between the lines of Ragonar Blaubarb ant Horrild Hairwire and an inlaw to Capt. the Hon. and Rev. Mr Bbyrdwood de Trop Blogg was among his most distant connections) but every honest to goodness man in the land of the space of today knows that his back life will not stand being written about in black and white. Putting truth and untruth together a shot may be made at what this hybrid actually was like to look at.
Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his-cold toes, a bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and sense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for full-score eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four tes — ters one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, an-other when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? —; when he is a — yours till the rending of the rocks, — Sham.
Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen’s tea-time salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias’ cans, Findlater and Gladstone’s, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex’s molten mutton or greasilygristly grunters’ goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand! he could not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland’s split little pea. Once when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hic-cupping, apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron, like a scedar, of the founts, on moun-tains, with limon on, of Lebanon. O! the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike firewater or first-served firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhing-ingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yella — green funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch’s hospitality when they found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, jo, openwide sat, jo, jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of the most serene magyansty az archdio-chesse, if she is a duck, she’s a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, now is it? artstouchups, funny you’re grinning at, fancy you’re in her yet, Fanny Urinia.
Ain't that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dog’s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle for the very fourth snap the Tulloch–Turn-bull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet unre — muneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, num- mer desh to tren, into Patatapapaveri’s, fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho, chavi! Sat shin, shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.
[Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexexl COMMUNICATED.]
Around that time, moravar, one generally, for luvvomony hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early tum out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B., and do for himself one dandy time, nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the foreign devil’s leave the fraid bom fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guarda-costa leporello? Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here tokay, gone tomory, we’re spluched, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.
You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour’s word, and if ever, during a Munda conversazione commoted in the nation’s interest, delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers, vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag, and be a men instead of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what is the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille?: or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible’s travels or during your rural troubadouring, happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one comer of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? with-out one sigh of haste like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber’s face, root with ear-waker’s pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione (since, still and before physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agri-colous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the panesthetic at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment visanvrerssas, cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a bab-bly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaves — water to those present (who meanwhile, with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the other people in the story, leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.
He went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and, as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argu-ment among slangwhangers, the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree to every word as soon as half uttered, command me!, your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, grati-as, I’m yoush, see wha’m hearing?, also goods, please it, me sure?, be filling this!, quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me?, is their girlic-on-you?, to your good self, your sulphur, and then at once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener’s eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker, (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more.
One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy downpour) as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal viol-ence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh’s house at 81 bis Mabbot’s Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther lae-tich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back, and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert’s perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people, looking on him with the contemp of the contempibles, after first gaving him a roll in the dirt, might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.
All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already? In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his
Wife; By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and
Thunder for Life Not yet has the Emp from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre; Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made
Warre; Not yet Witchywithcy of Wench struck Fire of his Heath from on
Hoath; Not yet his Arcobaleine forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath; Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool Gardener’s bound to
fall; Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will
there’s his Wall; But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons
leap his Bier And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff
in her Ear. Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eire-whiggs raille! Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of
Perce–Oreille.
Shem’s bodily getup, it seems, included an adze of a skull, an eight of a larkseye, the whoel of a nose, one numb arm up a sleeve, fortytwo hairs off his uncrown, eighteen to his mock lip, a trio of barbels from his megageg chin (sowman’s son), the wrong shoulder higher than the right, all ears, an artificial tongue with a natural curl, not a foot to stand on, a handful of thumbs, a blind stomach, a deaf heart, a loose liver, two fifths of two buttocks, one gleetsteen avoirdupoider for him, a manroot of all evil, a salmonkelt’s thinskin, eelsblood in his-cold toes, a bladder tristended, so much so that young Master Shemmy on his very first debouch at the very dawn of protohistory seeing himself such and such, when playing with thistlewords in their garden nursery, Griefotrofio, at Phig Streat III Shuvlin, Old Hoeland, (would we go back there now for sounds, pillings and sense? would we now for annas and annas? would we for full-score eight and a liretta? for twelve blocks one bob? for four tes — ters one groat? not for a dinar! not for jo!) dictited to of all his little brothron and sweestureens the first riddle of the universe: asking, when is a man not a man?: telling them take their time, yungfries, and wait till the tide stops (for from the first his day was a fortnight) and offering the prize of a bittersweet crab, a little present from the past, for their copper age was yet unminted, to the winner. One said when the heavens are quakers, a second said when Bohemeand lips, a third said when he, no, when hold hard a jiffy, when he is a gnawstick and detarmined to, the next one said when the angel of death kicks the bucket of life, still another said when the wine’s at witsends, and still another when lovely wooman stoops to conk him, one of the littliest said me, me, Sem, when pappa papared the harbour, one of the wittiest said, when he yeat ye abblokooken and he zmear hezelf zo zhooken, still one said when you are old I’m grey fall full wi sleep, and still another when wee deader walkner, and another when he is just only after having being semisized, an-other when yea, he hath no mananas, and one when dose pigs they begin now that they will flies up intil the looft. All were wrong, so Shem himself, the doctator, took the cake, the correct solution being — all give it up? —; when he is a — yours till the rending of the rocks, — Sham.
Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen’s tea-time salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias’ cans, Findlater and Gladstone’s, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex’s molten mutton or greasilygristly grunters’ goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude! Rosbif of Old Zealand! he could not attouch it. See what happens when your somatophage merman takes his fancy to our virgitarian swan? He even ran away with hunself and became a farsoonerite, saying he would far sooner muddle through the hash of lentils in Europe than meddle with Irrland’s split little pea. Once when among those rebels in a state of hopelessly helpless intoxication the piscivore strove to lift a czitround peel to either nostril, hic-cupping, apparently impromptued by the hibat he had with his glottal stop, that he kukkakould flowrish for ever by the smell, as the czitr, as the kcedron, like a scedar, of the founts, on moun-tains, with limon on, of Lebanon. O! the lowness of him was beneath all up to that sunk to! No likedbylike firewater or first-served firstshot or gulletburn gin or honest brewbarrett beer either. O dear no! Instead the tragic jester sobbed himself wheywhing-ingly sick of life on some sort of a rhubarbarous maundarin yella — green funkleblue windigut diodying applejack squeezed from sour grapefruice and, to hear him twixt his sedimental cupslips when he had gulfed down mmmmuch too mmmmany gourds of it retching off to almost as low withswillers, who always knew notwithstanding when they had had enough and were rightly indignant at the wretch’s hospitality when they found to their horror they could not carry another drop, it came straight from the noble white fat, jo, openwide sat, jo, jo, her why hide that, jo jo jo, the winevat, of the most serene magyansty az archdio-chesse, if she is a duck, she’s a douches, and when she has a feherbour snot her fault, now is it? artstouchups, funny you’re grinning at, fancy you’re in her yet, Fanny Urinia.
Ain't that swell, hey? Peamengro! Talk about lowness! Any dog’s quantity of it visibly oozed out thickly from this dirty little blacking beetle for the very fourth snap the Tulloch–Turn-bull girl with her coldblood kodak shotted the as yet unre — muneranded national apostate, who was cowardly gun and camera shy, taking what he fondly thought was a short cut to Caer Fere, Soak Amerigas, vias the shipsteam Pridewin, after having buried a hatchet not so long before, by the wrong goods exeunt, num- mer desh to tren, into Patatapapaveri’s, fruiterers and musical florists, with his Ciaho, chavi! Sat shin, shillipen? she knew the vice out of bridewell was a bad fast man by his walk on the spot.
[Johns is a different butcher’s. Next place you are up town pay him a visit. Or better still, come tobuy. You will enjoy cattlemen’s spring meat. Johns is now quite divorced from baking. Fattens, kills, flays, hangs, draws, quarters and pieces. Feel his lambs! Ex! Feel how sheap! Exex! His liver too is great value, a spatiality! Exexexl COMMUNICATED.]
Around that time, moravar, one generally, for luvvomony hoped or at any rate suspected among morticians that he would early tum out badly, develop hereditary pulmonary T.B., and do for himself one dandy time, nay, of a pelting night blanketed creditors, hearing a coarse song and splash off Eden Quay sighed and rolled over, sure all was up, but, though he fell heavily and locally into debit, not even then could such an antinomian be true to type. He would not put fire to his cerebrum; he would not throw himself in Liffey; he would not explaud himself with pneumantics; he refused to saffrocake himself with a sod. With the foreign devil’s leave the fraid bom fraud diddled even death. Anzi, cabled (but shaking the worth out of his maulth: Guarda-costa leporello? Szasas Kraicz!) from his Nearapoblican asylum to his jonathan for a brother: Here tokay, gone tomory, we’re spluched, do something, Fireless. And had answer: Inconvenient, David.
You see, chaps, it will trickle out, freaksily of course, but the tom and the shorty of it is: he was in his bardic memory low. All the time he kept on treasuring with condign satisfaction each and every crumb of trektalk, covetous of his neighbour’s word, and if ever, during a Munda conversazione commoted in the nation’s interest, delicate tippits were thrown out to him touching his evil courses by some wellwishers, vainly pleading by scriptural arguments with the opprobrious papist about trying to brace up for the kidos of the thing, Scally wag, and be a men instead of a dem scrounger, dish it all, such as: Pray, what is the meaning, sousy, of that continental expression, if you ever came acrux it, we think it is a word transpiciously like canaille?: or: Did you anywhere, kennel, on your gullible’s travels or during your rural troubadouring, happen to stumble upon a certain gay young nobleman whimpering to the name of Low Swine who always addresses women out of the one comer of his mouth, lives on loans and is furtivefree yours of age? with-out one sigh of haste like the supreme prig he was, and not a bit sorry, he would pull a vacant landlubber’s face, root with ear-waker’s pensile in the outer of his lauscher and then, lisping, the prattlepate parnella, to kill time, and swatting his deadbest to think what under the canopies of Jansens Chrest would any decent son of an Albiogenselman who had bin to an university think, let a lent hit a hint and begin to tell all the intelligentsia admitted to that tamileasy samtalaisy conclamazzione (since, still and before physicians, lawyers merchant, belfry pollititians, agri-colous manufraudurers, sacrestanes of the Pure River Society, philanthropicks lodging on as many boards round the panesthetic at the same time as possible) the whole lifelong swrine story of his entire low cornaille existence, abusing his deceased ancestors wherever the sods were and one moment tarabooming great blunderguns (poh!) about his farfamed fine Poppamore, Mr Humhum, whom history, climate and entertainment made the first of his sept and always up to debt, though Eavens ears ow many fines he faces, and another moment visanvrerssas, cruaching three jeers (pah!) for his rotten little ghost of a Peppybeg, Mr Himmyshimmy, a blighty, a reeky, a lighty, a scrapy, a bab-bly, a ninny, dirty seventh among thieves and always bottom sawyer, till nowan knowed how howmely howme could be, giving unsolicited testimony on behalf of the absent, as glib as eaves — water to those present (who meanwhile, with increasing lack of interest in his semantics, allowed various subconscious smickers to drivel slowly across their fichers), unconsciously explaining, for inkstands, with a meticulosity bordering on the insane, the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused and cuttlefishing every lie unshrinkable about all the other people in the story, leaving out, of course, foreconsciously, the simple worf and plague and poison they had cornered him about until there was not a snoozer among them but was utterly undeceived in the heel of the reel by the recital of the rigmarole.
He went without saying that the cull disliked anything anyway approaching a plain straightforward standup or knockdown row and, as often as he was called in to umpire any octagonal argu-ment among slangwhangers, the accomplished washout always used to rub shoulders with the last speaker and clasp shakers (the handtouch which is speech without words) and agree to every word as soon as half uttered, command me!, your servant, good, I revere you, how, my seer? be drinking that! quite truth, grati-as, I’m yoush, see wha’m hearing?, also goods, please it, me sure?, be filling this!, quiso, you said it, apasafello, muchas grassyass, is there firing-on-me?, is their girlic-on-you?, to your good self, your sulphur, and then at once focuss his whole unbalanced attention upon the next octagonist who managed to catch a listener’s eye, asking and imploring him out of his piteous onewinker, (hemoptysia diadumenos) whether there was anything in the world he could do to please him and to overflow his tumbletantaliser for him yet once more.
One hailcannon night (for his departure was attended by a heavy downpour) as very recently as some thousand rains ago he was therefore treated with what closely resembled parsonal viol-ence, being soggert all unsuspectingly through the deserted village of Tumblin-on-the-Leafy from Mr Vanhomrigh’s house at 81 bis Mabbot’s Mall as far as Green Patch beyond the brickfields of Salmon Pool by rival teams of slowspiers counter quicklimers who finally, as rahilly they had been deteened out rawther lae-tich, thought, busnis hits busnis, they had better be streaking for home after their Auborne-to-Auborne, with thanks for the pleasant evening, one and all disgustedly, instead of ruggering him back, and awake, reconciled (though they were as jealous as could be cullions about all the truffles they had brought on him) to a friendship, fast and furious, which merely arose out of the noxious pervert’s perfect lowness. Again there was a hope that people, looking on him with the contemp of the contempibles, after first gaving him a roll in the dirt, might pity and forgive him, if properly deloused, but the pleb was born a Quicklow and sank alowing till he stank out of sight.
All Saints beat Belial! Mickil Goals to Nichil! Notpossible! Already? In Nowhere has yet the Whole World taken part of himself for his
Wife; By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced to Worms, Blood and
Thunder for Life Not yet has the Emp from Corpsica forced the Arth out of Engleterre; Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made
Warre; Not yet Witchywithcy of Wench struck Fire of his Heath from on
Hoath; Not yet his Arcobaleine forespoken Peacepeace upon Oath; Cleftfoot from Hempal must tumpel, Blamefool Gardener’s bound to
fall; Broken Eggs will poursuive bitten Apples for where theirs is Will
there’s his Wall; But the Mountstill frowns on the Millstream while their Madsons
leap his Bier And her Rillstrill liffs to His Murkesty all her daft Daughters laff
in her Ear. Till the four Shores of deff Tory Island let the douze dumm Eire-whiggs raille! Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of
Perce–Oreille.
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