Along the rocky coast just a little southeast of the
Sandycove tower lie several rocky landmarks that play minor
roles in Ulysses: “the Muglins," "Bullock harbour,"
and "Maiden's rock."
Dalkey Island, not mentioned in the novel, is the largest of
several rocky outcroppings off the point where the coast stops
slanting southeast from Dublin and takes a more southerly
course toward Bray. This
island is no longer inhabited but contains the remains of some
sparse settlements. The rocky shoals east of Dalkey Island,
called the Muglins, pose a significant hazard to shipping, and
so have been fitted with a light. As Mulligan, Stephen, and
Haines approach the fortyfoot
hole in Telemachus, they see "a sail
tacking by the Muglins."
A little later in the same episode, Stephen and Haines
approach two men who are observing the sailboat's course: "—
She's making for Bullock harbour," a small
artificial harbor, constructed from local granite, that lies
less than half a mile away from the tower. This harbor cannot
accommodate large ships, so the sailing vessel must be of
modest size.
Much later, in Oxen of the Sun, the narrative
observes that Theodore Purefoy likes to fish from a boat off
the small harbor: "Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes
the sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair
of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound
with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for
flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear."
The two anonymous men who comment on the boat's course in Telemachus
also remark on a man who drowned in the ocean nine days
earlier: "The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with
some disdain. / — There's five fathoms out there, he
said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about
one. It's nine days today." Stephen makes the assumption that
the sailboat is conducting a search for the body: "The man
that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting
for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy
face, saltwhite. Here I am."
In Proteus, he thinks again about the corpse
surfacing, and names the place where he drowned: "The man that
was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock.
They are waiting for him now." Maiden Rock lies just north of
Dalkey Island, so the boatman is assuming that the tide will
have swept the body far to the north.
