Pflaap!

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An obstreperous, i.e. noisy, mouth, converted by drunken gaiety into an "obstropolos," threatens to cover up a very distinctive sound, "Pflaap!," which tells every ear in the vicinity that there is a "Blaze on." And then the eyes catch up: "There she goes. Brigade!" The Dublin Fire Brigade came into existence in 1862 and still operates under that name. Someone in the group of tipsy medicals, probably the same man who first heard the distinctive sound, declares that it's down "Mount street way," where the maternity hospital stands, and urges the group to reverse direction on Holles Street and run back toward the point from which they started: "Bout ship.... Cut up!... Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race."

Every detail but one in this short paragraph seems fairly easy to decipher. The one enigma is "Pflaap!" What could that sound have to do with a fire engine? In their dramatized account of the final pages of Oxen on JJON, Clive Hart and Harald Beck suppose that it represents "the sound of the whips or reins against the lower backs of the horses. NB: there were no motorized fire engines in Dublin in 1904." It does seem plausible that such a sound could be produced by leather striking flesh, but there are several problems with this reading. No matter how fiercely a fireman might wield his whip, would the sound be loud enough to carry two or more city blocks and be heard over the drunken chatter of companions? Also, this sound makes someone instantly think "Blaze on," even though many horse-drawn conveyances of the time would have employed whips. Finally, why would the last iteration of the sound contain twice as many "a" sounds as the preceding three? Whips cannot be wielded so as to prolong their smacking sound. Their retort is sharp, short, and invariable.

A better explanation, first ventured by Jorn Barger and affirmed by Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner, is that the sound comes from "the brigade's horn" (1319). Better still is Vincent Van Wyk's suggestion, in a personal communication, that it is produced by a steam whistle. These whistles, powered by excess steam from the engine's boiler, could be prolonged simply by holding the throttle open. Joyce's passage records two short blasts in succession, then another one after a pause, and finally one long pull on the chain to make the warning unmistakable: "Pflaaaap!" The videos posted here should enable readers to judge the plausibility of Van Wyk's claim. He notes that the "pfl" consonant cluster at the beginning of the word is distinctively German. (Stephen revels in similar German sounds in Scylla and Charybdis: "Pfuiteufel!") Germans who speak carefully pronounce both the "p" and the "f" distinctly in a quick burst. The distinctive effect of combined plosives no doubt figured in Joyce's aural imagination as he contrived to imitate a sudden expulsion of steam.

The sound returns twice more in the paragraph that concludes Oxen of the Sun. The men must be hearing two more pulls of the steam whistle's chain as the engine, now out of sight, continues on its course. But it also seems possible that Joyce has contrived to make the sounds comment on the hyperbolic religious declarations that the young men are mocking: "Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap!"; "You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap!" These rough interruptions (rougher if produced by a raucous steam whistle than if by a whip) may be heard as the narrative's mocking dismissals of theistic claptrap––the equivalent of the "raspberry" produced by sticking one's tongue between one's lips and blowing out a fart sound. A similar effect ends Sirens as Bloom's fart––"Pprrpffrrppffff"––deflates Robert Emmet's grand dying words. There too, no intention is required of the character. Joyce does it for him, using a sound in the physical environment to mock overblown rhetoric.

The loud blasts of the whistle linger to the end of the chapter, and they return one last time in Circe as "Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom." The story of the fire engine is also picked up in that chapter when Bloom sees a bright distant glow across the river and wonders, "Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush." But the young drunks quickly forget their impulse to run down to Mount Street and gaze on the latest firefighting technology. At the beginning of Oxen's final paragraph, someone proclaims, "Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse." The destination is now, once again, the Westland Row train station, as it was when the men first exited the pub, and Denzille Lane will get them there about as quickly as Denzille Street would have before they heard the sounds of the fire engine.