Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Cyclops/307

thumb|600px|center|page=310 Annotations compos mentis5(Latin) A legal expression meaning of sound mind, sane.Gifford (1988) 345. A pishogue, if you know what that is.5Clearly, the Citizen does not know what that is. A pishogue is a magic spell. The Hiberno-English word he is looking for is pithogue, from the Irish piteog, which means an effeminate man, a dandy, a sissy, or (in modern usage) a homosexual, which is possibly what lies behind the Citizen's insult. The term pishogue is never applied to individuals.Gifford (1988) 345. Gifford, in common with most annotators, does not appreciate the Citizen's mistake. It is possible that the mistake is Joyce's rather than the Citizen's. The two words occur on the same page of Father Dineen's Irish-English Dictionary (first edition). Joyce certainly knew this work; it was first published in 1904, the year in which Ulysses is set, and Dineen appears in Scylla and Charybdis (202.31-32 and 206.30).Foclóir Gaedhilge agus Béarla: An Irish-English Dictionary Dineen Patrick S. 1904 M. H. Gill & Son Ltd. Dublin 508 http://www.ucc.ie/celt/Dinneen1sted.html If the mistake is the Citizen's, it is another indication that he is not as fluent in the Irish language as he would have us believe. See also 301.24. References Annotations to James Joyce's UlyssesPreceding Page | Page Index | Next Page