This post continues last week’s post by closely examining the Prankquean’s puzzling riddle, which occurs several times in Finnegans Wake.

The Prankquean asks Jarl Van Hoother, “Why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease?” and she repeats this riddle twice in the episode, changing only one word each time:

why do I am alook alike two poss of porterpease?

why do I am alook allike three poss of porterpease?

The riddle occurs again in II.1 when Shem recalls his mother asking,

How do you do that lack a lock and pass the poker, please?

And again at the start of II.2:

And howelse do we hook our hike to find that pint of porter place?

And in the Norwegian Captain episode, when the Captain asks where he can buy a suit in Dublin:

Hwere can a ketch or hook alive a suit and sowterkins?

And then in ALP’s final monologue:

What’ll you take to link to light a pike on porpoise, plaise?

Those are the repetitions I recalled off the top of my head when I first wrote a draft of this post as an email to my editor. There are more, but I won’t list them all here.

The meaning is probably a mix between “Can I get a pot/pint of porter, please?” (Prankquean asking for hospitality, like Grace O’Malley) and “Can I pass the porter [of the door], please?” (to enter). The door is slammed in her face in response.

In fact, in the first draft of Finnegans Wake, the earliest version of the riddle was “Why do I want a cup of porter?”

There’s a paragraph in III.4 that suggests that the name of the dreamer in real life is Porter. If that is the last name, then the question takes on a new meaning. It’s dimly asking, “Why do I look like — why am I a look alike for — our children…like we’re all peas in a pod, a pod of Porter peas?”

Or peas in a pot, cooking together and blended together. Or pee. The family’s urine mixes in the same chamber pot. 

Why is it that we’re a family? What is it that makes us a family? What even is a family?

It could also be “Why am I like a pot of peas?” in the sense that she’s steaming mad at the insult. The Prankquean is associated with fire and passion (“she lit up and fireland was ablaze”).

On the mythopoetic level, the Prankquean is the archetype of the feminine principle of the universe, who comes to rouse the male principle into action. She is the cause of the Fall and the healing of it (ALP is described in I.4 as “she who shuttered him after his fall and waked him widowt sparing and gave him keen and made him able” [Cain and Abel, obviously]).

She’s also curiously associated with the young form of ALP, the girls in the Park. One source I consulted suggested that the word “alike” in her riddle looks like Alice…as in Alice in Wonderland, the looking glass, Issy gazing into a mirror to double herself into the temptresses in the Park.

The phrase “alook alike” does indeed perform a kind of doubling in the question, and the Prankquean is called the “niece-of-his-inlaw” — Issy is referred to sometimes as HCE’s niece, possibly to deflect the uncomfortableness of his incestuous desires for her (which would be another explanation for why she is a pea in a pod with him: ALP is not only the wife of the dreamer but his daughter, twisted by the dream into a niece to disguise his incestuous lust). In the Norwegian Captain episode, ALP is the daughter or niece of the Tailor, who is the other side of the Captain/HCE.

The later scatalogical aspects of the crime in the Park are implied in the Prankquean episode as well:

And the prankquean pulled a rosy one and made her wit foreninst the dour. 

“To pluck a rose” was slang for a woman to urinate or defecate. 

She does make her “wit” (wet). And plucking a rose is also deflowering, which suggests the other “wet.”

(And on my first read through, I thought this just meant she put her head against the door! How innocent I was….)

The second time, she “made her witter before the wicked.” That is, made her water (urinated).

The third time, she “made her wittest in front of the arkway of trihump.”

So on one level, this is just regular, comparative, and superlative, corresponding to Vico’s three ages (wit, witter, wittest). It’s also a battle of wits.

But on another level, she is the girls in the Park (alook alike, words that double themselves) urinating in front of a masturbating HCE.

His masturbation is part of the story: in the first round, when the Prankquean arrives, Van Hoother is “laying cold hands on himself.” In the second round, he is “shaking warm hands with himself.” And the third time he “had his hurricane hips up to his pantrybox, ruminating in his holdfour stomachs” (followed by a parenthetical echo of the Four Old Men [their catchphrase “Oh dear”], the elderly versions of HCE: in II.4, as they watch Tristan cuckold HCE, it says of the old men that they were watching with “their mouths making water” — drool that recalls HCE’s (or the girls’) scandalous urination).

Each time also finds one of the twin boys making love to the dummy (Issy, the sister — the brothers’ pursuit of her is the incestuous lust of HCE reflected into the world of the children) [their success with her is HCE’s fall, is the cuckolding of King Mark]

And each time also is accompanied by a reminder of HCE defecating in the Park (“Shut!” = shit) [excrement hitting the ground corresponds to his fall, like the “Thud” of the archdruid and St. Patrick’s excrement in one of the Wake’s final episodes]

After the third question, Jarl Van Hoother shows up personally to close the door:

And he clopped his rude hand to his eacy hitch and he ordurd and his thick spch spck for her to shut up shop, dappy. And the duppy shot the shutter clup.

“ordurd” suggests “ordure” (excrement) and “turd,” in addition to giving orders for the door to be closed.

As throughout the Wake, the Fall is also the birth of art, the “thick spch” that arises and is echoed from the thunder.

But note that “shut up shop” is both “shut up” and “set up shop.” And “duppy” contains “dup” (“to open”), and “clup” could be both “closed” or “up.”

The closing is also an opening: the doors of Howth Castle remaining open, as Grace O’Malley demanded in the original legend.

The Fall is also the Resurrection. The Ricorso that follows the three ages — corresponding to the very short Book IV of the Wake — is the end that sweeps it all away but also serves as a new beginning. The second thunder word appears here.

The thunderword is also HCE’s flatulence. The story is, after all, the first piece of alliterative poetry in “all the flamend floody flatuous world.” A play on “fatuous.” Those words also unite fire and water, the contrary forces. Floody is also “bloody,” as in the curse (Christ’s blood).

I already commented in the last post on the ending, how it illustrates that the parts are necessary for the whole, both the whole of the individual and the whole of the universe, of which the individual is microcosm:

The prankquean was to hold her dummyship and the jimminies was to keep the peacewave and van Hoother was to git the wind up. Thus the hearsomeness of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.

Notice the Prankquean is associated with the dummy (which represents Issy, the daughter): the female principle is both mother and daughter, that which tempts him to crime and precipitates his fall, as well as that which gathers up the pieces of the fall and puts him back together by passing on the energy into the next generation.

In the next post, I’ll have a closer look at the end of the Prankquean paragraph and explore the question of what exactly happens at the end. Does Jarl Van Hoother slam the door, or is he shot down by the Prankquean and/or the dummy?

The (un)surprising answer is…both.