The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 100

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him : priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn : burst sideways. Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine. Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Black edged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers for instance : they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Brown. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes : blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner. My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better. The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy’s bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested. It’s all written down : he has to do it. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that of course… Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch : middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded business men, consumptive girls with little sparrow’s breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of them : sleep. On Dignam now. In paradisum. Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something. The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny