103.01 At Island Bridge she met her tide.
103.02 Attabom, attabom, attabombomboom!
103.03 The Fin had a flux and his Ebba a ride.
103.04 Attabom, attabom, attabombomboom!
103.05 We're all up to the years in hues and cribies.
103.06 That's what she's done for wee!
103.07 Woe!
103.08
103.09 Nomad may roam with Nabuch but let naaman laugh at Jor-
103.10 dan! For we, we have taken our sheet upon her stones where we
103.11 have hanged our hearts in her trees; and we list, as she bibs us,
103.12 by the waters of babalong.
Summary Page 103:
At Island Bridge weir she met him. There were the soldiers. Up went a hue and cry! Woe! By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept. [Pausing now to consider the material of the first four chapters, we find that the story of HCE, while resembling that of Finnegan in many aspects, differs from the allegory of the primeval giant in one essential detail. Finnegan once laid away for dead remains prostrate on his bier; HCE though buried in an escape-proof coffin (76—78) works loose and is now everywhere at large. The implication of this contrast reaches down to the root of Joyce’s intention. The bier of Finnegan is the stage on which history enacts itself in the goings and comings of HCE. If Finnegan wakes, the stage is overturned and doomsday arrives. Thus Finnegan must lie quiet, whereas HCE, to perform his function as history itself, must circle endlessly. [In one essential detail the “afterdeaths” of the two are in consonance. It is characteristic of both stories that no sooner do we see the old man laid out than we behold his little woman taking over the scene, busily cherishing her husband’s memory and carrying it forward. Scarcely has Finnegan’s dirge begun when the Anna Livia melody is heard (6-7). Similarly, when the world has tucked HCE into his tomb, the cry goes up again for the little woman (101): “Tellus tellas allabouter.” [And so we may expect that during the next four chapters it will be the figure of the mother that holds the foreground. When the standpoint was that of the father’s history, the mother presence emerged finally as a warming promise of things to come. Now that the standpoint is to be that of the mother, the father history will appear as something recollected, lost in the deep past, yet brought forward and presented in the souvenir collections of his relict. The dead husband is respected, yet understood in a way which he would not have altogether liked; and his demise, while regretted, is not regarded with a sentiment unfriendly to the irreversible procession of time! Indeed, it is quite as though the little woman, for all of her cherishing of the past, were primarily concerned to foster the best of her old shattered Humpty Dumpty in the lives of her chicks.]