The old milkwoman of Telemachus lives by a very
relaxed sense of time, expressed in her careless assurance
that there is "time enough" for the tower residents to
pay their bill. Joyce shows here the fast-paced rhythm of
modern urban existence, embodied especially in the Englishman,
meeting the slow-moving world of rural Ireland.
Haines points out that “We had better pay her, Mulligan,
hadn’t we?” To the old woman, “the bill” is something that can
be settled now or at some later date. She was probably not
going to mention it, even though it has been accumulating
every day for ten days, and when Mulligan comes up with a coin
to settle most of the tab (prompted by Haines’ exhortation to
“Pay up and look pleasant”), the hand in which she receives
the florin is “uneager.” To Stephen’s assurance that “We’ll
owe twopence,” she says calmly, “Time enough, sir . . . Time
enough.”
The gap between rural Ireland and the frenetic modern world
has no doubt narrowed since the publication of Ulysses,
but it remains. Eric Cross' 1942 portrait of The Tailor shows
a man "prodigal of time," whose favorite saying is "Glac
bog an saoghal agus glacfaidh an saoghal bog tú: Take
the world fine and aisy and the world will take you fine and
aisy" (13-14). Even in the era of the European Union time
moves slower in this magical country, as Tony Hawks’ 1998
travelogue Round Ireland with a fridge (1998) makes
hilariously clear.
