I’d like my job! – Not likely!
U 5.178-9: Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for.
Bloom is clearly pleased that he has not given the sponge M'Coy a chance to practise his valise trick on him. And yet most readers of Ulysses today outside Ireland would miss the element of irritation conveyed in the phrase “I'd like my job“. Help arrives in the form of Paddy Crosbie’s Your Dinner’s Poured Out (1981), and particularly his appendix of “Phrases from the Markets Area and a short glossary of Dublin Slang words”:
‘No, I’d don’t like to be imposed on.’ The phrase occurs in Lady Gregory’s short play, The Workhouse Ward (1909):
The Irish Monthly of September, 1908, includes the same expression:
Eamonn Finn |
Joyce's Words >