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Haines tries out his Irish on the old milkwoman, but she has no idea what he’s saying. She asks if he’s from the west of Ireland (where Irish is more commonly spoken), but as we know, he’s English. Stephen thinks about how impressed the woman is with the Englishman and the Doctor, while he goes unnoticed.
The irony of the Englishman being the only one who knows Irish is pretty straightforward. Historically, there’s a basis for it–the use of Irish dropped during the 19th century thanks to the Great Famine and the ban on teaching Irish in the National Schools. It survived in the West and in more remote parts of the island, but in “The Pale,” the area around Dublin that had the strongest British influence, Irish was largely unknown at this time. It was revived by the writers and scholars of the Celtic Revival, which was just gaining momentum in 1904. Because language nearly became extinct, the new Irish republic made it a required subject in schools–for a while it was a requirement to pass an Irish exam in order to get a government job. Every Irish student now learns it, but they don’t tend to use it, and the language is again gravely threatened. Joyce famously tried to learn Irish, but gave up after a few lessons.
Perhaps for this reason, whatever it is that Haines says in Irish is not in the text of Ulysses. Rob has come up with a clever solution–if you roll over the Irish text, you’ll get a translation. (This is true wherever you see foreign words in Ulysses Seen.)
You might be confused by the milkwoman’s question to Haines, “Are you from West, sir?” This is how the question appears in the first edition, the 1922 edition, of Ulysses, so that’s what we’re using. In later editions it would be corrected to “Are you from *the* West, Sir?,” but you get the idea either way.
Extra Credit: Whom do you think Rob has Haines is modeled after? Who does he look like?
Here, again, I think there’s something going on with the juxtaposition of the milkwoman’s lack of use for Gaelic and Stephen’s silly obsession with impressing her. It seems to me that Stephen’s upset mirrors the consternation of the academic whose prescriptions for the proletariat are roundly ignored by same, like trying to get them to eat locally grown radicchio instead of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. Sounds great on paper, but largely ignores the daily reality of trying to get your kids to eat in between part time jobs. Why in the world would the milkwoman give a fig for learning Gaelic? What I think we’re seeing is a dig at both Stephen and the cultural elite for trying to make the milkwoman something she ain’t and something she has no interest in being.
Interesting parallel. But might Stephen’s treatment of the milkwoman be seen, instead, as the reverence of the artist for Athena’s wisdom? I wouldn’t have even known the milkwoman embodied Athena, had I not read it here.
Stephen Colbert right?
Yes. Absolutely.
-R