Blowing the bellows
Blowing
the bellows
In Brief
In Sirens Bloom thinks of John Glynn "Seated all day at
the organ," talking to himself or to "the other fellow blowing
the bellows." The organ in St. Xavier's church where Glynn is
employed must be of a type that has become rare in the last
century but that would still have been common in 1904. Such
instruments needed at least two people to operate them: a
skilled keyboardist and someone with strong arms working
nonstop to keep the bellows inflated. If the musician's
practice went on "all day," this second job must have been
tiresome beyond belief.
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Large pipe organs are wind instruments not essentially unlike
accordions or bagpipes, but they require a lot more air. The
ones installed in Christian churches before the 19th century
relied on large leather bellows such as might be found in a
blacksmith's shop, weighted at the top to apply steady
pressure to the inflated bag. When one bellows was depleted it
had to be filled up again, while a second bellows maintained
the flow of air. Some larger organs had as many as twenty
bellows powered by small armies of pushers. Victorian-era
inventors tried generating the necessary wind with engines
powered by steam, water, gasoline, and eventually electricity.
Electric blowers began to replace bellows in organs in the
1860s, but the conversion process would have been uneven,
slowed by a host of local factors. Although the
electrification of Ireland began in the 1880s it did not
become really widespread until the 1920s and 30s, so it is
plausible to suppose that many of the organs that Joyce knew
in Dublin were still powered by human hands.
Bloom thinks often of the invisible, thankless jobs that
unimportant people perform. Here in Sirens, his
appreciation of the "fifty quid a year" that the
well-respected Glynn earns as a church organist does not
prevent him from recognizing that there would be no music
without some poor drudge keeping the bellows inflated.
Similarly, in Nausicaa the winking of the Kish
lightship makes him reflect, "Life those chaps out there must
have, stuck in the same spot." He is still thinking of them in
Eumaeus, feeling grateful to "the harbourmasters and
coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and
out amid the elements, whatever the season, when duty called Ireland
expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a
terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish
lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment."
That chapter also shows his awareness of humdrum restaurant
work. Stephen wonders aloud why they turn chairs upside down
on tables at the end of the day, and Bloom has a ready answer:
"To sweep the floor in the morning."
Thanks to Vincent Altman O'Connor for calling my attention to
the mention of the bellows-blower in Sirens, which
none of Joyce's annotators have commented on until now.
