was sneezing cold she met a beggargirl in the park and, having no small change about her, she went behind a bramblebush & slipped off her sprigged petticoat28 and gave it to the beggargirl29 who instantly disappeared (she having been in point of fact Saint Dympna who got up the exhibition of poverty on purpose30) along with the petticoat. On another occasion there was a pestilence caused by a certain dragon who said it would go on for ever unless she took off all her glad rags31 and walked over Ireland, her left hand to the sea32. So she did this, but she had herself painted green all over her body wherever naturally possible as far as mother nature allowed33. And when they heard the moaning of the Shies like the harbour bar telling she was off 34, the weakness of death fell on everybody & everybody pulled down all the blinds in Ireland. The dragon there and35 then got a grip on the big clean ideals &36 converted and entered a nunnery37. >VF
b) [ Tristan & Isolde 1]
He, the gentleman2, was sodavisaged. First he was a martyr to indigestion3, rather liable to piles procured by sitting on stone walls4 while revelling in the beauty of nature5 and over and above that by medical advice of Dr Codd he had been lowering daily potions6 of extract of willow bark to keep off the Hibernian flu when he contracted a stubborn cough7. With feverish pallor, indicating the action of the high seas on a teetotal stomach8, he beheld the holy ghosts of his undergradual loves, Henriette atop of the haycock, Nenette de l’Abbaye9 behind the taproom do[o]r, Marie Louise all fun and fleas, tipsy Suzanne catch as catch can, and, last but not least, the rawboned housekeeper of the local parish priest. Ghastlily, he pastloveyed her with a blackedged expression10. >VF
She11 lifted her head, her eyes supremely satisfied. For now she rather gathered12 full well13 from his persiflage14 that he was a loveslave for life, she was the one and not that mousy mop [of] golliwog curls, Kateagnes O Halloran. >VF
— Smiling Johnny, pleaded she gynelexically15, do you keer for meemeee just a weeny weeny mossel?16 >VF
Offsong & partially selfstrangled tried to reply he17:
— Yes lady he brightly winkily replied after her asking it over, seriously he replied brightly. Yes lady, I am not worthy. You little know a man’s past.18 Why were we born in two different places? Wherefore have we met yesterday so to speak? Why this strangulation, this yearning for a bonum arduum as distinguished from a bonum simpliciter?19 Will you accept a portion of my divided heart?20 Wellaway, alas, for death in, with, for and on account of my wellbeloved I mutely yearn. >VF
—O, can that sobstuff let you. My own loveman must not talk like that,21 the bold puss answered22 impatiently after her waiting patiently all through the damned old dinner of burnt loinchops and ignoble potatoes with everybody talking from soup to nuts23 all about loinchops and mash murphies24 and the pig’s arse and cabbage of the day before and they saying it wasn’t a patch on25 the silverside boiled cowbeef of the stewsday26 day before that again & the potroast27 with purpletop swedes and equally ignoble colicflower28 without a morsel of appetite when a plain bottle of porter & a gooseberry tart29 would have done her. Love she wanted, the biggest obtainable, true new blind bottomless highspeed stunning30 staggerhumanity caveman31 love at first sight, the universal super jewel32, for which reason she again kissed him, and he, being an inborn gentleman33, with a gift of blushing as well as of backgammon,34 counterkissed because it was his one maxim in this life that if a lady, for example, happened to have a libido35 [for] a bite of a piece of Stilton cheese and he happened, for pure36 argument’ sake, to have a quarter of a pound or so of feetygreen Gorgonzola37 in his pocket why he’d just simply put his hand in his pocket, don’t you know, and well he’d just give her the cheese, don’t you see, to take a bite off. >VF
However first & foremost, before testing her triangle to prove whether she was as the newspapers reported a virgo intacta, he asked her whether she had ever indulged in clandestine fornication with or without contraceptives38. >VF
[—] No, nein, never in God’s world39, innocent as the undriven snow, his almost aunt40 swore whilst she adhered41 to that big left shoulder of his42. By the axecleft of my notch! By the hairs of my dearest parents! By the inviolable dew of Ben Bulben! By the freshwater pullan herring of Lough Neagh43! No plunderer has ever wandered, has ever beheld the hundred wonders of my underland.44 >VF
Her mournful embracer pointed to the sidereal host. By them he bade her swear, them that were and are and shall be, the silently 45 strewing, the strikingly shining, the twittingly twinkling, our true home and (as he uranographically46 remarked), the lamplights of lovers in the Beyond. >VF
Up they gazed, skywon47 to stardom48, while in his girleen’s ear that loveless lover sinless sinner, breathed: >VF
Gaunt in gloom >VF
The pale stars their torches >VF
Enshrouded wave >VF
Ghostfires from heaven’s far verges faint illume >VF
Arches on soaring arches, >VF
Nights’ sindark nave >VF
Seraphim >VF
The pale stars awaken >VF
To service till >VF
In moonless gloom each lapses, muted, dim >VF
Raised when she has & shaken >VF
Her thurible >VF
And long and loud
To night’s nave upsoaring >VF
A starknell tolls >VF
As the bleak incense surges cloud on cloud >VF
Voidward from the adoring >VF
Waste of souls’ >VF
It wasn’t exactly anything he said49 or it wasn’t anything he exactly did but all the same it was something about him like the way he was always sticking his finger into his trousers pocket and then sticking it into his eye like a borny50 baby51, the great big slob or the once she dropped her ittle hankyfuss and the way so graceful he picked it up with his hoof 52 and footed it up politefully53 to her ittle nibblenose. >VF
— How gentle & kind I am, Issy. I never hurt the feelings of another. And, I say, what a lovely nature is mine! >VF
— Go away from me instantly you thing54 she roared. Curse your stinking putrid55 soul & all belonged to you you scum56. Forget me not!57 >VF
— Perfect, you bloody bitch, he said. >VF
He took leave of her and circulated58 as bidden. She let out a whistle59 before many instants had passed60. Hearing his name called he most sagaciously ceased to walk about and turned, his look now charged with purpose61. >VF
— No, come back, she cried62. How sweetly you have responded to me63. >VF
I so want you!64 >VF
— It’s important, her nephew65, who was very continental66, said, stopping, circulated at walker’s pace in an opposite direction. >VF
c) [Tristan & Isolde, the kiss 1]
The handsome six foot two rugger and soccer champion and the belle of Chapelizod in her quite charming ocean blue brocade with iris petal sleeves & an overdress of net darned with gold2 well in advance of the fashion3, bunnyhugged scrumptiously in the dark where they dissimulated themself4 behind the chief stewardess’s cabin while with sinister dexterity he alternately rightandlefthandled on & offside fore and aft her palpable rugby and association bulbs. She murmurously asked for some but not too much of the best poetry quotations reflecting on the situation something a stroke above its a fine night and the moon shines bright and all to that for the plain fact of the matter was that by the light of the moon of the silvery moon she loved to spoon before her honeyoldmoon5 at the same time drinking deep draughts of purest air serene6. He promptly then elocutioned to her a favourite lyrical bloom7 in decasyllabic iambic hexameter: >VF
— Roll on, thou deep and darkblue ocean, roll! >VF
The sea looked awfully pretty at that twilight hour so lovely with such wellmannered waves. >VF
It was a just too gorgeous sensation he being exactly the right man in the right place and the weather conditions could not possibly have been improved on. Her role was to roll on the darkblue ocean roll that rolled on round the round roll Robert Roly rolled round. She gazed while from an altitude of 1 yard 11 ½ in. his deepsea peepers gazed O gazed O dazedcrazedgazed into her darkblue rolling ocean orbs.8 >VF
Nothing if not amorous, he then having dephlegmatised his frog in the guttur and getting busy on the touchline uttered what follows9 from his toploftical10 voicebox: >VF
— Isolde! >VF
By elevation of eyelids that she addressed insinuated desideration of his declaration. >VF
— Isolde, O Isolde, when theeuponthus11 I oculise12 my most inmost Ego most vaguely senses the deprofundity of multimathematical immaterialities whereby in the pancosmic urge the Allimanence of That Which Is Itself exteriorates on this here our plane of disunited solid liquid and gaseous bodies in pearlwhite passionpanting intuitions of reunited Selfhood in the higher dimensional Selflessness.13 >VF
Hear, O hear, all ye caller herrings!14 Silent be, O Moyle! Milky Way, strew dim light! >VF
When he had shut his duckhouse15 the vivid girl reunited milkymouthily his her and their disunited lips and quick as greased lightning the Breton champion drove the advance messenger of love with one virile tonguethrust past the double line of ivoryclad forwards fullback rightjingbangshot into the goal of her gullet. >VF
Now what do you candidly suppose she, a strapping young old Irish princess, 18 hands high & scaling nine stone twelve in her madrapolam smock with not a thing under her hat but red hair