Sheep, Goats, and the "Figura Etymologica" in "Finnegans Wake"

Author(s): R. J. Schork
Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 200-211
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27710807
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 Sheep, Goats, and the Figura Etimol?gica
in Finnegans Wake

R.J. Schork, University ofMassachusetts?Boston

At the bottom of a page in one of the pocket notebooks into which he

crammed material potentially useful for the composition of Finnegans
Wake, James Joyce made the following entry:
shave 8c haircut
of
shape hegoat
Schoepf Herrgott.1

These three phrases reappear in the finished text of the work:

He of him as alios cos he ast for shave and haircut

repeat pious people
said he'd shape of hegoat where he just was sheep of herrgott with his tile
Not true what chronicles is his
togged. Top. bringing portemanteau
full (FW 240.33-36; my
priamed potatowards. emphasis)

Glugg (Shem) is speaking in the "Mime." After having been gravely

rebuffed by Issy and the Rainbow Girls for his failure to answer the
second riddle, he rises to make a confession and re
general firmly
solves never to sin The elements woven into this are,
again. passage
even for the Wake, unusually complex in technical virtuosity and cryp
tic in narrative significance. My purpose in this article is to examine
the many different ways that a request for a "shave & haircut" func
tions as both a receiver and a transmitter of motifs that are repeated
as the work. These
programmatic signals throughout seemingly banal
two bits of phonemic and semantic data enrich the Wake enormously:
sheep, hairy and horny goats, scapegoats, sheep with topknots, the
Lord God who has created and who will judge between sheep and
goats, fraternal rivals, and finally the pervasive and ingenious Joycean
deployment of figura etymologica.

'Buffalo Notebook VLB.33.35 (=JJA 37.20). The entire three-line entry is crossed
out with a
large blue-crayon X; there is an "-er" at the end of "Schoepf" which was
crossed out in ink by Joyce, presumably when he first wrote the word.
are cited "U + chapter and line" from James Joyce, Ulysses; ed. Hans
Joyce's works
Walter Gabler (New York: Vintage, 1986); "FW + page and line" from James Joyce,
Finnegans Wake (New York: Viking, 1959); "JJA + volume and page" from James Joyce,
Finnegans Wake: Buffalo Notebooks VLB.33-36, pref. & arng. Danis Rose (New York:
Garland, 1978).

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?April

? 1993 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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 The in Wake 201
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

Exposition will, paradoxically enough, get off to the clearest start

by beginning with the last item first. There is a series of minor sound
changes rung from "shave" to "shape" (which also suggests "sheep")
to "Schoepffer]" (Ger. creator) in the Notebook and "sheep" in the
text; this is echoed in the ladder-steps from "haircut" to "hegoat"
to (Ger. Lord from the scrip
(billygoat, ram), "Herrgott" God). Apart
tural tone of "Schoepl-" (the Germanic root of the verb "to create"),
nothing in either version of these two phonic scales is exceptional.
was quite
Joyce, whose German good, compiled Notebook VLB.33
in Feldkirch, Austria, a small town on the River 111 near the Swiss
border, in the late summer of 1932.2 Several preliminary drafts of
sections of the "Mime" also written at this same time are the only

evolving parts of the Wake actually composed in a German-speaking

country. This linguistic milieu has left its mark on the text. "Schoepf"
= a wether, a castrated
(? oe), the German word for
suggests "sch?ps"
sheep. Equally close to the Notebook's
in sound and "Schoepf"
sight
is the German noun
"Schopf" (without an umlaut), which means a
"tuft of hair on top of the head." Thus, Joyce's placement of "Top
Not" (FW 240.35)?with two emphatic capitals?in the same line of
the Wake as "sheep of herrgott" is designed to call attention to both
the pronunciation of the text's "sheep" and the shape and meaning of
the genetic lexeme "Schoepf"?as well as to tip a minor nod to the
Herr Gott, who to a person unfamiliar with German might appear
to be someone who's hair.
merely got

Figura etymologica is the technological term which describes and de

fines the figure of speech which bridges the linguistic gap between
"Schoepf/sheep" and "Top Not." This Latin phrase denotes word
in which the same or very similar roots {etyma) from two different
play
languages are placed close together; the translingual juxtaposition is
designed to display the author's radical command of both elements in
the pair. Vergil's phrase pluviasque Hyadas {Aeneid, 1.744) is a standard
classical example of this rhetorical ploy: the Latin adjective pluvius
means the Greek noun Hyades is the name of a constellation
"rainy";
which was believed to threaten rain when it rose with the sun. In Ver
gil's epic, then, the phrase reminds his diglottal hearers/readers, in no
uncertain terms, that foul weather is forecast. It is not surprising that
this figure is a favorite of the epically learned Milton. "Immortal
amarant" appears in Paradise Lost (111.353); the first element of this
is a Latinate adjective meaning "deathless"; the second is the
phrase

2 For details about the date and place see JJA 37.xi and R. J. Schork, "Feldkirch in
the Wake" forthcoming inModern Austrian Literature; this article also surveys the heavily
Germanic foreground of the "Mime."

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202 Schork

name of an imaginary flower which lives forever, hence its deri

vation from the Greek amarantos, which also means "unfading" or
"deathless."
Since he was a "lexical student" (FW 180.36) of great breadth,
Joyce
frequently used figura etymologica in the Wake. Curiously enough,
I know of no general "annotation" or
however, specialized study that
identifies or comments on this linguistic finesse in his works. This si
lence is odd in the face of many attempts to wrestle with
Joyce's rheto
ric and a recent stab at coming to rational (or at least notational) terms
with the bedevilingly of
complex phenomena Wakean language. Ex
nevertheless, are to cite, once one the of
amples, easy grasps presence
the paired roots: "domestic economy" (FW 545.5) combines the Latin
and Greek words for "house"; a "chickerow of beans" (FW 425.19)
plays on the Latin-Italian cicer, which is the chick-pea, a type of bean;
"yellachters" (FW 92.2-3) is a portmanteau composed of the Modern
Greek and German nouns for . . .
"laughter." "[SJoboostius augustan
. . . cesarella," all in the same line (FW 468.4), evoke a Greek adjective
= and two Latin honorific terms which are
(sebastios hallowed, august)
associated with Roman . . . Seabeastius"
emperors (cf. "Angustissimost
[FW 104.6]). "[G]yrogyrorondo" (FW 239.27), "tone sonora" (FW
200.13?14), and "spiritus to the wind" (FW 194.6) should not require
any explanation beyond statement, a second look, and a rec
vestigial
ollection of pre-SAT vocabulary-building exercises?and maybe a
covert at a
glance dictionary.
In the line immediately after the deeply covered German-English
figura etymologica ("Schoepf/sheep.Top Not"), one finds "chronicles"
(FW 240.36). It is customarily as a reference to general his
glossed
torical documents or, specifically, to the two Old Testament books of
Chronicles. Emboldened by Joyce's interlanguage audacity, however, I
suggest that "chronic ills" lies just beneath the surface of "chronicles."
More evidence will be offered to show the propriety and significance
of this suggestion, but some immediate support comes from the Fran
glish phrase "souffrant chronic" (FW 241.7), which appears just seven
lines beyond the original "chronicles." "Souffrant," of course, is a genu
ine French participle-adjective meaning "sick," "ill." is
Perhaps Glugg
to excuse his sexual and mental slowness
attempting aggressiveness
because he has been sick for some time because he drank too much
vodka ("priamed full potatowards" [FW 240.36-241.1]) or ate too
many home-cooked tarts ("plentitude of house torts" [FW 241.7]). I
derive the alcohol from the distilled "-worts" at the end of "potato
wards"?vodka is made from mash (worts). and her col
potato Issy
orful 28-member female jury, however, will undoubtedly reject any

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 The in Wake 203
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

such excuse of his "pruriest pollygameous inatentions" {FW 241.5)

which is based on some peculiar type of alleged "pecuniarity ailmint"
{FW 241.5-6). And the electioneering bribery also educed from Irish
wards" those districts won by
phrase "potato (that is, gifts of food) is
a on the Two etyma
certainly pecuniary blight body politic. opposed
are present in "pruriest": prurient (lecherous) and purest, each of
which applies respectively to the situation of and Issy. Finally,
Glugg
the Latin noun pecus (cattle, herd) lies behind the English adjective
"pecuniary" which lies behind Joyce's "pecuniarity." The second ele
ment in this word may be derived from the Latin aries, arietis, a bat
ram and the Zodiacal sign for the ram. If so, then another herd
tering
of goats wanders across this primary passage. Thus, while Glugg's
confession and promise of personal and financial reformation may
not explicitly be meant to be rejected as packed with horse turds
("house torts" [FW 241.7]), the goatish twin is implicitly and peculiarly
full of crap.
On a far more elevated level, Joyce's semantic leap from "hegoat"
to "herrgott" suggests the influence of or some
Scripture liturgical
text. Inasmuch as the primary passage in the Wake is part of Glugg's
confession of guilt and his promise of reformation, the most obvious
Biblical parallel would be the Mosaic provisions for the Great Day of
Atonement in Leviticus 16. This most solemn of ancient Hebrew sac
rifices for sin prescribes that lots be cast over two goats: "one lot for
the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat" (Lev. 16:9). The for
mer shall be sacrificed for the people; the latter "shall bear upon him
all their [the children of Israel] iniquities unto a land not inhabited:
and he [Aaron] shall let go the goat in the wilderness" (Lev. 16:22).
Several scapegoats wander across the landscape of the Wake: "Scape
the Goat" (FW 329.36?330.1),3 "the skipgod, expulled" {FW 488.22),
and "a most moraculous jeeremyhead sindbook for all the peoples"
{FW 229.31-32). The last phrase includes not only a remarkably mi
raculous book of saints (or sins) full of screeds and lamentations (jere
miads) for the unfaithful, but also the wonder-working scapegoat
(Ger. Sundenbok), on whose head are put all the (Lev.
transgressions
16:21) which the people apotropaically denounce (jeer). This pas
sage is echoed later in "mascoteers and their sindybuck that saved a
city for my publickers" {FW 412.35). The second element ("sindy
buck") in this quotation speaks for itself?especially when it is pro
nounced in the same burst of Germanic breath as the redemptive

3Cf. Bloom's protest in "Circe": "I am being made a scapegoat of" (U

Leopold
15-776).

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204 Schork

"savingsbook in the form of a pair of capri sheep" just two lines before
(FW 412.33?34). But "mascoteers" needs to be divided into its com
ponent parts. The first ("mas-") is the Latin noun for a male; the sec
ond, "-cot-," a Teutonic or a
yields "god" phonetic "goat"?which
combines to form a "Herr Gott" or hegoat that is immediately fol
lowed by a Germanic scapegoat. (The final element in "mascot-eers"
goes with the preceding word, "Welsfusal," to form "Welsh
properly
Fusiliers," as notes). And one wonders if the mascot of this
McHugh
was a
regiment goat.
The primary provision for the scapegoat ritual in the King James
translation of Leviticus does not specifically mark that animal as a
but that archaic term is used for two other
"hegoat"; impressive Old
Testament Both of these are described,
reparation-sacrifices. offerings
in one of the books of Chronicles: the Arabians offer
significantly,
7,700 hegoats as tribute to Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. 17:11) and Heze
kiah brings seven hegoats to purify the Temple (2 Chron. 29:21).
In this connection one must mention Tuff's cathartic invocation to

"Trisseme, the mangoat" (FW 353.2), which occurs in a passage of

Islamic flavor. At the same time, the presence of Saint Pa
distinctly
trick's Purgatory alongside several Koranic formulas in this text urges
ecumenical caution?or, better, Christological distinction. The two
terms cited the encode some sort of
("Trisseme, mangoat") may primi
tive Irish appeal to the Trinitarian God-man, the Christian messiah
to whom a believer in Allah "the Most Marsiful, the Aweghost, the
One" would deny that divine status. In Islamic theology
Gragious
one hears of no incarnation of God's son: "all of man? Notshoh?"
(FW 353-2-4)
The Old Testament term "hegoat" underscores the species and
gender of the sacrificial victim. The primary male character (one hesi
tates to write "hero") of the Wake is HCE, under all his titles and in all
his metamorphoses. Not the least important of these is his status as
. . .with bottes over buckram babbish
"Nanny's Big Billy Woolington
kis" (FW 568.18-19). He's "a big rody ram lad at random" (FW
28.36), "the buck to goat it" (FW 54.22-23), the "buck to billy back"
= initials are re
(FW 320.34; Ger. bock ram). HCE's proclamatory
peatedly linked with goats in the following passage:

that fishabed of the creditable of the Hab

ghoatstory /?aardly ?dventyres
erdasher, the two Curchies and the three ?nkelchums in their Bearskin

ghoats! (FW 51.13?15; my emphasis)

In case anyone missed the point, this identification and several of

the attendant sonic somersaults are in a brief?but em
present

phatic?reprise of the motif: "Horkus chiefest ebblynuncies!?He

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 The in Wake 205
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

shook be ashaped of hempshelves, hiding that shepe in his goat"

(FW 373.12-14).
There is, then, compelling evidence that one of Joyce's transfor
mations of HCE was that of a sacrificial animal who must expiate the
sins of the people; in scriptural terms, this victim is designated the
scapegoat, to be expelled into the wilderness on the of Atone
Day
ment. In the Latin of the Vulgate Old Testament a a
"hegoat" is hircus.
In the special Joycean language of Finnegans Wake, this term appears
in several significant passages, all associated with HCE. The most
memorable is the following:
Latin me that, my scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure
trinity eryan.
Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had paps on him. (FW
buckgoat 215.26-28)4

Here, in a passage with both philological ("Latin," "sancreed," "er

yan") and theological ("trinity," "sans-creed") overtones, HCE is called
a "hegoat citizen of Dublin"; the Latin noun's masculine and
gender
the presence of underscore the animal's sex. A of
"buck-goat" pair
distinctly similar phrases echo that title: "Erin's hircohaired culoteer"
{FW 275.1-2) and "Hircups Emptybolly" {FW 321.15).
Joyce's portmanteau adjective "hircohaired" just quoted ismeant to
remind readers not only of the initial collocation, in several variations,
of goats and hair in FW 240.34?35, but also of the obvious fact that
goats are hairy: "haricot"(/<W 227.3). This characteristic is more ex
pansively alluded to in one of a series of on the head
epithets heaped
of HCE in the "Mime": "the tiresome old hairyg orangogran beaver"
{FW 396.16-17), which follows closely on the heels of "old milkless a
ram" {FW 396.15) and is itself followed by a semi-Germanic "sheo
pards" (FW 396.17). Earlier reports indicate that HCE has "hairly
legs" {FW 137.22), and in Anna Livia's final reverie he is parachiasti
cally "ever complete hairy of chest, hamps and eyebags" {FW 616.14).
The Latin adjective for "hairy" is pilosus, the goatish presence of
which I detect in "Hirculos pillar" {FW 16.4) and of hircu
"pilluls
leads" {FW 128.36). In fact, the classical specter of Hercules' Pillars in
the last two phrases suggests that the Latin-sounding "pious alios" in
the genetic passage (FW 240.33) may have something vaguely ana
to do with both Aeneas of Roman
grammatic pius Vergil's epic and
hairyness. If that leap is too great, observe the Greek father of history
in "hairyoddities" {FW 275, n. 5).
In the face of my contention that HCE is hirsute, a reader
might

4John Gordon presents evidence that the man with breasts is HCE's barman, Sack
erson, who seems to be involved in several identity-glides: (Finnegans Wake: A Plot Sum
mary [Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1986], pp. 52-57). Also note Bello's accusation
that Bloom privately exposes his "unskirted thighs and hegoats udders" (U 15.2992).

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2o6 Schork

claim that attribute is the result of my circular interpretation of the

text, from a congenial though compulsively classical perspective. And
such a reader also hesitate to acknowledge any thematic
might signifi
cance in the manifold appearance of goats in the Wake. The skeptic
would be entitled to ask "Quare hircum?" (FW 89.27; "Why a goat?").
I believe that Joyce purposely posed that cryptic question in the Latin
to convey a hint to the initiated reader that HCE is not merely hairy;
he's also (in contemporary idiom) horny.5 The link is Latin. In the
literature, especially in comedy and verse invective, of the ancient Ro
mans, are lecherous animals, so much so that the
goats notoriously
mere of sexual contact with a randy buck should any
thought disgust
Roman woman.6
right-thinking
Plautus's comedy Mercator (TheMerchant Mariner) is a handy source
of information about this attitude. The plot involves a son who has
from a trading a young woman
returned trip with whom he pur
chased for his pleasure in Rhodes. The merchant's sexagenarian fa
ther sees the girl and is sexually rejuvenated. His next-door neighbor
reacts with scorn: anima senex hircosus I tu osculere mulierem?
foetida,
(11. 574-75; "Will an old goat like you kiss the girl with your foul
breath?"). Earlier in the play the same neighbor gives one of his slaves
some instructions about the farm: profecto ego illunc hir cum castrari volo
(1. 272; "I want that hegoat castrated immediately"). The lusty father,
who overhears this line, correctly it as a most unfavorable
interprets
omen. As a matter of fact, the neighbor compounds that inauspicious
to the father an old goat, he ad
sign; just prior calling mockingly
dresses him as vervex (1. 567; "wether" = castrated sheep). Joyce dis
a verbalized form of this word in "berbecked" (FW 64.31). Pho
plays
the vlb shift is as in Latin as it is in Joyce's Wakean
netically, typical
the ersatz perfect passive form
language; morphologically, participai
is a clue that the word is meant to be translated as "castrated." As has

already been noted, the German for wether is "Sch?ps," which (even

5Cf. "Dr A. Home (Lie, in Midw., F.K.Q.C.P.I.)" at U 14.1302-3 and throughout

"Oxen of the Sun."
6 In one of Catullus' addressed to the regulars at salax taberna ("a
grossest invectives,
drinking spot which leaps with lust"), the poet rakes the studs who think that they alone
have the right to fuck every girl (quidquid est puellarum I confutuere) and who regard all
rivals as billygoats (putare ceteros hircos) (Carmen 37). A standard commentary glosses
hircos with "i.e. creatures detestable to all women." This connotation of crude lechery
can also be found in English: "An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his

goatish to the change of a star!" (King Lear 1.2.138; cf. "kingly leer" [FW
disposition
398.23]). Also note Stephen Dedalus' post-retreat vision of damnation: "stinking, bes
a hell of lecherous (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
tial, malignant, goatish fiends"
p. 138) and Leopold Bloom as "A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking
goat of Mendes" (U 15.1755).

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 The in Wake 207
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

if it does not seem to rear

its umlauted head in the Wake) would be
pronounced something like "sheeps" and is a word which would cer
tainly recommend itself in these circumstances. Finally, the presence
of "mutton leg's" {FW 64.32) in the next line of the text confirms that
the heard herd of all sorts of sheep in this passage is under tight
linguistic control.
In his life of Tiberius, Suetonius reports that a noble Roman ma
tron committed suicide after she had been forced to cater to the Em
as hirsuto atque olido seni {Tiberius 45; "a
peror's lusts. She curses him
hairy, stinking old geezer"); and the Emperor's sexual tastes are also
mocked in a gross line from a farce produced soon after the scandal:
hircum vetulum capreis naturam ligurire {Tiberius 45; "The old goat goes
for the does with his tongue"). Joyce was well versed in the rich vo
cabulary of Latin obscenity and scatology; and the allusions to Plautus
and Suetonius which I suggest above are not the only ones in his
work.7 Hence, I argue that Joyce was drawing a
specific and sharp
parallel between the sexual rivalry of HCE and Glugg-Shem8 by re
a "scapegoat," but also in terms
ferring to the sinful father not only as
of a stock-character in Roman the senex libidinosus, the raun
comedy,9

chy gaffer, who in the language of ludic abuse is frequently and typi
a old In this connection note
cally labelled hairy goat. also "Scape the
that =
Goat, gafr" [Welsh gafr goat] {FW 329.36-330.1).
In the light of its slightly risque plot (a father and son as rivals for
the love of a fairly compliant young woman), it is not likely that Joyce
read Plautus's Mercator at Belvedere There are, however, al
College.
lusions to Plautine comedy in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, and many
indications of Joyce's life-long interest in and enjoyment of Latin lit
erature. The "senex hircosuslold was a of Roman
goat" trope staple

7 See R. "Plautus and Martial in Joyce," N&Q

J. Schork, n.s.36 (1989), 198-200.
8Note the diction in this reference to ALP: "The grazing Mar
rights (Mrs Magistra
tinetta) expired with the expiry of the goat's sire" (FW 89.19-21).
9The "Mime" has much in common with Roman Its characters are intro
comedy.
duced at the very start of the chapter: The ingenue-virgo (Issy), the W?e-matrona (ALP),
two types of young bucks-adulescentes (Chuff and Gluff), the old goat-amator senex
(HCE), and the typical servants-servus
servaque (Saunderson and Kate) (FW 219-21).
The "benediction of the Holy Genesius Archimimus" (FW 219.8-9) is invoked; he is
an actual Roman comic actor who wasmartyred for refusing to
perform
a
burlesque of
Christian on stage. There is an allusion to Terence's [The Brothers] by
baptism "Adelphi
the Brothers Bratislavoff" (FW 219.14). as the winds to a close, the
Finally, chapter
standard a Roman actor for is heard three times: "Upploud!" (FW
appeal by applause
257.30), "Uplouderamain!" (FW 257.33), "Uplouderamainagain!" (FW 258.19). Just
after the first call for audience we learn that "The . . . ,Game, here
approval, play
. . ." (FW for both "play" and "Game" is ludus, which
endeth 257.31). The Latin word
is also the standard term for a Roman comedy. The troupe of actors in this type of
popular drama is called the grex (= herd); cf. "the Grex's molten mutton" (FW 170.34).

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2o8 Schork

comedy and invective; indeed, Joyce might have run across the term
in a dictionary. Nevertheless, there is one verbal parallel that causes
me seriously to speculate that Joyce did actually have the original text
of the Mercator in hand when he wrote this Latinate description of
HCE: "to live all safeathomely the pvesenile days of his life of opu
lence, ancient ere decrepitude . . . till stuffering stage" (FW 78.1-3). In
Plautus's play when the Old Father asks his neighbor what image he
the friend Acherunticus I senex vetus,
projects, replies frankly: decrepitus
(11. 290-91); "Bound for the pains of hell, [you are] an ancient, de
crepit, old dotard"). The close conjunction of the key words in both
brief does not co
passages argues against?but firmly negate?pure
incidence. ismore.
There In the primary Wake notebook now entitled
Scribbledehobble, there is the entry "Stinking goat M.L."10 Who (or
is "M.L."? I can find no candidates in Part V of A
what) Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man to which these notes supposedly correspond.
Could the "M.L." be an abbreviation for "Mercator Lysander"? Ly
sander is the sarcastic neighbor in Plautus's play, the one who repeat
edly calls the amorous father a decrepit, foul-breathed, goatlike old
geezer.
Two references to the Roman Emperor Tiberius in the Wake ap
pear in passages that are quite close to each other:

And, anent Tiberias and other incestuish salacities

speaking among ger
ontophils. (FW 115.11-12)
The unmistaken of the persons in the Tiberiast came to
identity duplex
in the most devious of ways. (FW 123.30-31)
light

The imputation of incest is obvious; "salacities" has its roots in the

Latin salax (from salire = to leap), an adjective usually applied to lech
erous animals, as in Ovid's salax aries (Fasti ; "a randy ram"). The
4.771
Greek compound "gerontophils" here does not mean a "lover of old
people," but is the equivalent of the amator senex, the senex libidinosus,
the "horny old gaffer" of Roman Comedy. All of these qualities are
consistent with the picture of the unbridled, kinky, and geriatric lust
which Suetonius paints in his life of Tiberius. The Emperor's bi
sexuality (to some "a devious way" of is by
doing things) suggested
"duplex" and reinforced by "bisexycle" (FW 115.16). Tiberius's plea
sure was on the Isle of
palace Capri ("Goat Island"), where Suetonius
reports:
He devised little nooks of in the woods and [see "prostituta
lechery glades
in herba" (LAT. at (FW and had and girls dressed
grass) 115.15)], boys

10Thomas E. Connolly, James Joyce 's Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans
Wake (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1961), p. 74 [Notebook page 251].

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 The in Wake 209
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

as Pans. . . .The island was =

up openly called "Caprineum" [ the place
of goatlike behavior]. (Tiberius 43)

Again, these connections of vocabulary and theme strongly suggest,

but do not establish, an immediate link between the text of Suetonius
and the Wake. There is one additional remark to be made about the
career of the Emperor and its possible influence on Joyce's portrait of
HCE. Suetonius reports that even as a young officer Tiberius Clau
dius Nero was such a heavy boozer that he became known by the nick
name "Biberius Caldius Mero," which roughly means "Drinker of
Undiluted Hot Wine" {Tiberius 42). I know of no entry in any of the
Notebooks and no phrase in the Wake itself which would indicate that
Joyce directly imitated this ingenious triple pun. On the other hand,
I do not doubt for a second that the author who produced the name
play Hircus Civis Eblanensis would have certainly enjoyed this example
of virtuoso punning in Latin by Tiberius's subjects.
so far has
The evidence presented sought to demonstrate that Joyce
saw HCE as both an Old Testament scapegoat and a Roman comedy
billygoat. In fiction, as in life, children sometimes inherit the sins and
the drives of their father. In the Wake, the twin sons, Shaun and Shem
(a.k.a. Chuff and Glugg, and so forth) are definitely described in
terms of the sheep and goats of the New Testament parable.11 In his
gospel Matthew predicts that when the Lord comes in his glory, he
shall separate all nations, "as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the
goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on
the left" (Matt. 25:32-33). In the Wake, Shaun is, if not sacrilegiously
a Lamb of God, at least one of his sheep, while his brother Shem
(sometimes known as the devilish "Nick") is his goat-rival. The object
of the fierest brotherly competition is their sister Issy, who sometimes
plays the role of Little Bopeep: "All runaway sheep bound back bo
peep, trailing their teenes behind them" {FW 227.11-13). In fact, the
central point of the "Mime" section of the Wake (in which "shave and
haircut" appears) is the series of fraternal attempts to seduce Issy?or

nSee James Joyce, Letters, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Viking, 1957), 1.284: "Any
how I am now hopelessly with the goats and can only think and write capriciously.
Depart from me ye bleaters" (letter to Val?ry Larbarud, 30 July 1929). Roland McHugh
notes the biblical parable and cites the dedication of Blake's Jerusalem to the "sheep and
in his The Sigla of Jerusalem to the "sheep and goats" in his The Sigla of Finnegans
goats"
Wake (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), pp. 28-29. ln the text itself the twins Shem
and Shaun are called "one yearlyng . . . and one small yearlyng
sheep goat" (FW
69.17-18). For excellent discussions of fraternal polarization in the Wake, see Richard
Beckman, '"Them Boys Is So Contrary,' FW 620.12," JJQ, 26 (1989), 515-29, and
Kimberly Devlin, "Self and Others in Finnegans Wake: A Framework for Analyzing
Versions of Shem and Shaun," JJQ, 21 (1985), 31-50.

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21 o Schork

at least to determine the color of her underpants. While watching his

sons in action, HCE also fantasizes about various and means to
ways

possess his daughter sexually.

The most conspicuous evocation of contrasted sheep and goats is
"we lubded Sur Gudd for the sleep and the ghoasts" (FW 551.2-3).
Similar passages include "they wonted to get out by the
goatweigh
afore the sheep was looset" (FW 372.13-14) and "Sheepshopp. Bleat
ing Goad" (FW 305.5). The motif continues, with the substitution of
a Latin word for young male goat, billy-kid (caper; plural capri): "a
pair of capri sheep" (FW 412.33-34); it is expanded to include a hint
of probative of the pair at the Last "You will
placement Judgment:
know him by name in the capers but you cannot see whose heel he
in his wrought hand" (FW 563.7-9). There seems to be a
sheepfolds
a
zoologically confused phallic reference in "a Lambay chop as big as
battering ram" (FW 208.3?4); and later Glugg wants to get "his pho
ture in the papers for cutting moutonlegs and capers" (FW 233.2-3).
The Cad who encounters HCE in the Park is described as "the lu
ciferant . . . his under his out"
carryin overgoat schulder, sheepside
(FW 35.11-13), a bit of sartorial eccentricity which he shares with
over his
"BUTT (slinking his coatsleeves surdout squad mutton shoulder'
(FW 343.13-14).12 Each seems to think that wearing his sheepskin
coat this way will make him appear to look "more like a coumfry gen
tleman" (FW 35.14), umore life the jauntlyman" (FW 343.14).
Concentration on the parade of rival and rank goats and sheep
across the text has temporarily deflected attention from the stunning
figura etymologica in the original passage; but echoes of "[Schoepf]/
Not" (FW 240.35) definitely do occur in the Wake. In the
sheep/Top
"Mime" itself the lamb-like Shem-Chuff is transformed into St. Pat
rick with his "tonsor's tuft" (FW 234.11-12); a bit later in the same

chapter the Rainbow Girls waltz up to him, "their princesome hand

some angeline chiuff" (FW 239.29). The last word "chiuff" not only
of their attentions as the
identifies the recipient seraphic Chuff, but
one of his most attractive features:
also highlights ciuffo is the Italian
word for "topknot." In a lush description of Issy ("She is dadad's lot
tiest daughterpearl and brooder's cissiest auntybride" [FW 561.15

12 there is a wispish hint of an armpit in these two passages. If so, then the
Perhaps
source, again, may well be Roman invective: the hircus alarum ("hegoat of the armpits")
is found in the scatological verses of Catullus (Carmen 69.6; 71.1) and Horace (Epistles
1.5.29; cf. Satires 1.2.27) m which the foul body-odor of an unwanted suitor is broad
cast. I hesitate to connect this trope with "pious alios" (FW 240.33).
Though tempted,
At any rate, there seems to be some (Ger. Schuld) associated with the under/
guilt/sin
over-shoulder arrangement of these sheepskin goats.

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 The in Wake 211
Figura Etymologica Finnegans

16]), we learn that various flowers adorn her hair: "amaranth and
marygold to crown" {FW 561.21). These blossoms are, of course,
originally plucked from Milton: "Their crowns inwove with amarant
and gold, / Immortal amarant" {Paradise Lost, 111.352-53). But the
next line in the Wake is pure Joyce: "Add lightest knot unto tiptition"
(FW 561.22). (If there is a French "chignon"
or an Irish "cocan

gruaige" lurking somewhere in the text of the Wake, I haven't been

able to comb it out.)
Finally, for those interested in crosscultural folklore and legend, it
be worthwhile to any connection between the "goat
might investigate
king of Killorglin" and "the shape [sheep?] of betterwomen [nanny
goats?] with bowstrung hair" (FW 87.26-28).13 These Irish and Car
specters are adduced as witnesses in the trial of Festy King
thaginian
early in the Wake and they may well reappear elsewhere in the work.
For now, however, it is time to sum up. Starting with a cryptic entry
in one of Joyce's pocket notebooks written in an Austrian alpine town,
I see an etymologically logical progression from "shave & haircut" to
a German Herr Gott and a top knot. All of this is part of a massive
project in Finnegans Wake "to make soundsense and sensesound kin
again" (FW 121.15-16). Between the extremes of this involuted bilin
gual rhetorical figure, there are Shem's satanic goat and its fraternal
rival, Shaun's as well as Mosaic scapegoats and evangelically
sheep,
dexterous sheep and sinister goats. The identification of HCE, an ar
chetypical dirty old man, with the ludicrous hircosus senex of Roman
comedy makes perfect sense and is balanced by the darker side of a
Latin connection which brings the sadistically decadent Emperor Ti
berius on the Once these members of the cast have
stage. appeared,
however briefly, in their initial scene, they?or just barely reasonable
all over the
facsimiles thereof?pop up script of the Wake. Tracing
them through the thicket of the text is one of the many pleasures
which Joyce intended for the ideal readers who suffer through those
chronic ills which he termed "ideal insomnia" (FW 120.14).

13 in 146 B.C., the women

During the final siege of Carthage by the Romans of that
city cut their hair to make bowstrings. The color of the heroines' tresses is specifically
stated: "hair of Carrothagenuine ruddiness, waving crimson petties" (FW 87.28?29; my
I suspect that all this attention to red has to do with the trite
emphasis). something
comment made by Haines to Buck Mulligan in the Martello Tower in Ulysses:
early
"?Redheaded women buck like goats" (U 1.706).

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