What way?

What way?

In Brief

"What way is he taking us?" Jack Power asks "through both windows" of the carriage, apparently swiveling his gaze in two directions to get his bearings. "— Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street." Starting from the Dignams' house in Sandymount, the funeral procession travels north along the "Tritonville road" and the Irishtown Road, through the poor suburbs of Irishtown and Ringsend. It then turns west on the Ringsend Road and crosses first the River Dodder and then "The grand canal" on its way to Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street, a major thoroughfare on the south side of central Dublin. This path takes it to the Carlisle (O'Connell) Bridge over the Liffey.

Read More

The narrative takes note of sights at various points along this path. Passing "Watery Lane" (now Dermot O'Hurley Avenue), off the Irishtown Road in Ringsend, Bloom spots Stephen Dedalus walking toward town from his jaunt on the tide flats: "Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide hat." As the carriages roll along "Ringsend road," they pass " Wallace Bros the bottleworks" and then "Dodder bridge" as they cross the River Dodder, which flows north from the Wicklow Hills and empties into the Liffey just east of the Grand Canal. On the journey up Brunswick Street Bloom passes some of the same locales he traversed on foot in Lotus Eaters, including "The hazard." He thinks, "Only two there now. Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there."

As the cortège approaches the Grand Canal, Jack Power asks for the whereabouts of Corny Kelleher, the undertaker who has organized the procession. Martin Cunningham tells him that Kelleher is "At the cemetery"—the Prospect Cemetery in Glasnevin that is the ultimate destination, far to the northwest.

JH 2015
The route of the funeral procession superimposed on Hanni Bailey's simplified map of Dublin, which shows Sandymount extending farther to the east than it did in Bloom's time) Source: Anderson, James Joyce.