Deshil eamus
Deshil Holles Eamus
In Brief
Joyce indicated that Oxen of the Sun would develop embryonically through a
chronological succession of prose styles inspired by
writers of English prose, but his opening sentences have
little to do with English or with written prose. The three
percussive, incantatory paragraphs beginning with "Deshil
Holles Eamus"—a phrase compounded of Celtic and
Latin words, meaning something like "Let us go rightward to
Holles Street"—echo hymns chanted in late Roman fertility
rites.
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According to Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses (1930), Joyce wrote the first three paragraphs "in the manner of the Fratres Arvales" (277). The Arval Brothers were a "college" of twelve Roman priests who conducted ceremonies dedicated to the Lares, Dea Dia, Ceres, and other gods concerned with fertility and good harvests. Thornton and Gifford, citing evidence uncovered in Theodor Mommsen's 1887 History of Rome, add that the ceremonies involved an incantatory hymn written in the early 200s AD, most of whose lines sounded three times (I.294). The hymn concluded with a Triumphe or "Hurrah," which Joyce imitates with "Hoopsa."
"Deshil" is an Anglicization of the Irish deasil
(or deasal or deisiol), meaning
"turning to the right" or "turning toward the sun." Joyce may
have found it in P. W. Joyce's A Social History of
Ancient Ireland (2 vols., London and Dublin, 1913,
first published in shorter versions in 1903 and 1906). Gifford
cites this work as authority for the word's use as "a ritual
gesture to attract good fortune, and an act of consecration
when repeated three times" (I.301). Slote, who detects many
other debts to Joyce's Social History in the opening
paragraphs of Oxen, instead quotes here from the OED:
"towards the right...in the same direction as the hands of a
clock, or the apparent course of the sun (a practice held
auspicious by the Celts)."
"Eamus" is Latin for "Let us go," so Deshil
Eamus means something like "Let us turn ceremonially to the
right"—or toward the sun, which, though gone from the sky at
10 PM, does figure prominently in the chapter's second paragraph as a god
dedicated to fertility.
Where? To "Holles" Street, where Dublin's National Maternity Hospital is
located. This place consecrated to facilitating childbirth
will be the site where the mysteries of fertility are played
out. Slote suggests that Deshil Holles may also echo Denzil
Holles, the Earl of Clare, after whom the street was named. At
the end of Oxen, the young men spill out of the
hospital and walk past "Denzille lane" to Burke's pub
on the corner of Holles Street and Denzille Street.
Joyce's decision to start the chapter with an Irish word
suggests that his imitation of English prose styles may be not
only appreciative but also somehow subversive. The next three
paragraphs of Oxen continue to focus on the Latin that
was spoken in Britain and Ireland before English came on the
scene, and they address ancient Irish traditions of practicing
medicine and founding hospitals. The language of the 12th
century conquerors is thus presented as intruding into
existing cultural traditions, merging with them, transforming
and being transformed.


