In I.1, there’s a brief catalogue of all the goods that go into ALP’s “nabsack.” This includes

boaston nightgarters and masses of shoeset

I always just took this to be a reference to Boston, Massachusetts, a place that many Irish people emigrated to, mixed with garters and shoes.

But it’s also, the annotations inform me, chaussettes, the French word for socks.

I don’t recall many references to socks in the Wake. The only one I could think of off the top of my head was when the washerwomen report ALP’s cushingloo (song, lullaby — a version of the Letter):

Is there irwell a lord of the manor or a knight of the shire at strike, I wonder, that’d dip me a dace or two in cash for washing and darning his worshipful socks for him now we’re run out of horsebrose and milk?

She’s yearning for another man even as she’s pining for her fallen husband who is lost in a “winter’s doze.” And this new man will be a Tristan/Shaun type associated with cash (space, which appears here as “dace”). The feminine principle, turning the fallen energy into new relationships — ultimately letting go of the old (and of life itself) to turn the wheel and incarnate anew as the daughter to live out the same story in the next generation (to “puff the blaziness on,” I.1).

The annotations inform me that there are a fair number of instances of the word or syllable “sock,” but I don’t have the time or energy to explore them right now.

Joyce was more keen on *stockings* than socks, and there are indeed references to those. For instance, Issy is pleased that her boyfriend remembered “my size in shockings” (I.6). Somewhat related is the newspaper ad that appears in the Shem chapter (I.7):

[Jymes wishes to hear from wearers of abandoned female costumes, gratefully received, wadmel jumper, rather full pair of culottes and onthergarmenteries, to start city life together. His jymes is out of job, would sit and write. He has lately commited one of the then commandments but she will now assist. Superior built, domestic, regular layer. Also got the boot. He appreciates it. Copies. ABORTISEMENT.]

I realize that “to start city life together” grammatically connects to wearers of “abandoned female costumes”…but the first time I read it, I got the sense he was advertising to start life with the abandoned clothes themselves (!). Maybe it’s ambiguous, or maybe my mind is strange.

Writing this post out made me think of the word “sockdolager,” which means a “forceful blow” (like being socked in the face, as Shaun does to Shem in II.2) or an “exceptional person or thing.” I could have *sworn* this word appeared at the end of I.1 to describe HCE coming to replace Finnegan, and I was surprised to discover that I was misremembering.

I think I had become confused that “sockdolager” could mean a fish — upon looking into it, I discovered that it is also the name of a kind of spring-loaded fish hook — and I think my memory mixed the phrase “samesake sibsubstitute of a hooky salmon” in the final paragraph of I.1 with “sockdolager.” [Once again, HCE is connected to the salmon of knowledge consumed by Finn MacCool. Is “sibsubstitute” an example of HCE’s stuttering? Does “sib” suggest “sibling,” showing how HCE contains the energies of the brother battle that will become separated into the two warring brothers in the fallen world?]

The final words of that last paragraph of I.1 also contain the word “punch,” perhaps suggesting “sockdolager” to my faulty memory:

he, sober serious, he is ee and no counter he who will be ultimendly respunchable for the hubbub caused in Edenborough.

The chapter ends with an H-C-E phrase, encapsulating the energies of the Fall from the Garden of Eden, here suggested to be a punch from, or to, the Cad and/or one of the soldiers, the constituent parts of HCE. He is ultimately responsible for throwing the punch against himself, respunchable (in II.3, he says he was “peaching…the warry warst against myself” — preaching the very worst, in the form of the Cad/soldiers spreading rumors [perhaps about his behavior with those two girls, the peaches], and thereby pitching the war-est war that ever warred, the brother battle that manifests as all the conflicts of history).

Joyce renders “ultimately” as “ultimendly,” containing the idea of time. The Fall can represent the emergence of each individual into “clock time,” a self-conscious awareness of one’s limited time in this world, a kind of Selfhood or ego. If you’ve ever been anxious about how long something will take, keeping your eye on the clock, versus “losing yourself” in a pleasurable activity and losing all track of time, you have a sense of what I mean. I’m reminded of William Blake’s aphorism “The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.” HCE’s Fall coincides with the tolling of a clock tower’s bell.

The word also summons the idea of the end of time (ul-time-endly), the very last thing. In I.1, Finnegan is laid out “brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head” — he stretches from the beginning of time (Genesis) to the end of time (the acpocalypse, “a bockalips”). History plays out between his Fall and Rise, just as the life of each of us occurs between our Fall into self consciousness and our return to the universe, just like our day occurs between waking and sleeping, just like our sorrows occur between falling into Selfhood and rising into selflessness and joyful communion with others.

The word “sockdolager” actually occurs on page 91 (in I.4), during the trial of Festy King, who speaks in his defense as “Pegger Festy.” This character in I.4 is a new version of HCE that is beginning to separate into Shem and Shaun: at this point, he’s closer to Shem, though, much as the witness against him (who is also a form of HCE/the Cad) has become closer to Shaun. This is right before they separate firmly into the two brothers for the first time in the novel.

The paragraph on 91 says, “this the sockdolager had the neck to endorse” (the nerve to endorse?), his claim that “he did not fire a stone either before or after he was born down and up to that time.” [Hey, there’s the idea of “time” once more]

He’s basically denying he committed any offense: it’s HCE’s defense before the Cad all over again. He denies having thrown a stone at someone or defecated in the Park (linked in Joyce’s mind to sexuality) or “fired” a stone as in a kiln/oven (an act of construction — the Fall and creativity are linked throughout the book). As it says in I.1, speculating about the Fall — there depicted as Tim Finnegan falling from a ladder and/or the collapse of a building — “it may half been a missfired brick, as some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back promises.”