ETEXT: The Parable of the Plums
Jorn Barger
A Pisgah Sight of Palestine
or, The Parable of the Plums
by Stephen Dedalus
16 June 1904, ~1230 GMT
Two Dublin vestals, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and fiftythree
years in Fumbally's lane. They want to see the views of Dublin from the
top of Nelson's pillar. They save up three and tenpence in a red tin
letterbox moneybox. They shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and
coax out the pennies with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver
and one and seven in coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes
and take their umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain.
They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at
the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins,
proprietress. They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at
the foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They
give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to
waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each
other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the other have you the
brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down,
peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God. They had no idea it was that
high.
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the
lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who got
a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen
and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday. When they have eaten
the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty fingers in the paper the
bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings. But they are
afraid the pillar will fall. They see the roofs and argue about where
the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome, Adam and Eve's, saint
Laurence O'Toole's.
But it makes them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts and settle
down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the
onehandled adulterer. It gives them a crick in their necks, and they
are too tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums
between them and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off
with their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths
and spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings.
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