Page 735 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would
suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for
himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and
there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the

island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry,
Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr
Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in
Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman
in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard
or a bag of rapeseed out he’d run amok over half the
countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was
planted and all by lord Harry’s orders. There was bad
blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord
Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the
world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his
house and I’ll meddle in his matters, says he. I’ll make that
animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle
my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when
the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner
after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but
the first rule of the course was that the others were to row
with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful
likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed
chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough

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