Ruby Eumaeus Ulysses #20

Female sailor making her way to Ithacan coasts

According to Homer the swineherd Eumaeus was the first person who met with Odysseus and his son Telemachus as they finally returned to Ithaca.

Jame Joyce let his two alter egos, Leopold Bloom and young Stephen Dedalus enter an old, somewhat dirty coffeehouse, after being saved out of the claws of Circe and her maids.
The inn keeper was said to be the once so famous Skin-the -Goat, a member of the invinsibles. The legendary gang who stood behind the successful and gruesome murders in the Phoenix Park.
They became heroes among the common Irishmen, but most of them were caught and hanged.


"They used knives. Knives are not an Irish weapon. Maybe they were Italian," Bloom wondered.


Dedalus is encouraged to drink some strong, obscure coffee brew to sober him up, and also try eating " a roll of something".
"Liquids I can eat,"Dedalus answers laconically. James Joyce

They soon also meet an old sailor who seeks their company to do what old sailors are best to. Overwhelming an audience with weird experiences and a
firmly timbered view of life, society and politics. The long months and years in crowded cabins at sea are the sailors finishing schools. Many never made it to the end though, kept floating among pubs in the brackish water close to the docks.

"His Eyes were thick with sleep and sea air." James Joyce

"Illfated Norwegian barque," James Joyce

For a long time the conversation takes up various Irish topics. The betrayal of the Church (esp. considered Parnell, who almost gathered enough voices for Home Rule for Ireland, but was garotted by his own, for having an affair with Mrs. O'Shea.One of the saddest moment in newer Irish history.) The exploitations of farmers, and for that sake Irish land, used for export and high income for English noble landowners. Shipwrecking of tallships (on the one cliff of the huge Galway Bay) to crave insurance, and loss of work places for the Irish.

Jews. "He took umbrage of something or other, that muchinjured, but on the whole eventempted person declared, I let slip. He called me a Jew and in a heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts
in the least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a Jew too, And all his family, like me, though in reality, I am not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath." James Joyce
Norwegian tradition of barrel making for freighting of herring.Trade called cooper.

Both Joyce and Bloom are heavily influenced by their contemporary majors. Freud's and Darwin's ways of thinking are evidently coloring the conversation.
Joyce has many almost prophetic statements from his own bosom as well.
"Turks, it's the dogma. Because, if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die, they'd try to live better.At least so I think". James Joyce
A striking pendant to the suicide bombers of today.

A typical Penelope handicraft demonstrated.

With Stephen having nowhere to sleep. He was locked out of his tower, and gave his last money to a beggar, Bloom invited him home to the later famous house in 7 Eccles Street.
I presume next chapter will contain a meeting with Molly, Bloom's Penelope.

All pictures are made with my cellphone cam at the annual Harbor Days in Haugesund,

Originated by MaryT, check hers for today