Stephen thinks in Nestor that Mulligan has lent him
"one pair brogues." In Proteus he
thinks of the "borrowed sandals" on his feet,
so the shoes he is wearing appear to have openings in them,
but when he muses in Scylla and Charybdis that "His
boots are spoiling the shape of my feet" it seems clear
that these shoes are more substantial than the word sandal
would suggest today. Two kinds of shoes worn today may suggest
the range of possibilities defined by "sandals" and "boots."
Scots have long worn a kind of shoe called the ghillie brogue
which is completely open at the top to allow water to drain,
with a tie around the ankle to keep the shoe from being pulled
off in mud. Dressy forms of this shoe are still worn by
bagpipers, and dancers use them in both Scotland and Ireland.
There is also a more substantial dress shoe called a brogue,
apparently hailing from northern England and lowland Scotland,
that retains small perforations in a purely decorative
capacity.
Whatever form of brogue Joyce may be remembering, the
references in his novel suggest that he is thinking of
traditional rough footwear, rather than the dressy city shoes
that evolved from their country cousins in the 20th century.
When Cyclops imagines the Citizen as an
extravagantly rough "hero" from ancient Irish times, the
narrative places him in brogues: "He wore a long unsleeved
garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the knees in a
loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of
plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of
deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities
were encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple,
the feet being shod with brogues of salted cowhide
laced with the windpipe of the same beast." Salting is the
first, minimal stage in preparing a hide for use as leather.
In Oxen of the Sun the same words are applied to
Alec Bannon, who has recently returned from the wilds of
Mullingar: "the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed
shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted
sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of
Malachi Roland St John Mulligan." The parodic styles of this
episode make its narrations nearly as unreliable as the
parodic sections in Cyclops, but it is evident that
Bannon is wearing rough country walking shoes that contrast
with Mulligan's urban fashions.
Twice in Circe, Bloom appears in countryfied
outfits. In the first he seems to be an urban gentleman duded
up for tramping through the bogs: "In an oatmeal sporting
suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony buff shirt,
shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats,
fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues,
fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat." In
the second passage he is an itinerant western peasant, again
in brogues: "In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band,
dusty brogues, an emigrant's red
handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig
by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye."
Such shoes sometimes appear on the feet of Dubliners, but not
ones who are well-off. Circe affords one more
example: "The brothel cook, mrs keogh, wrinkled,
greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey and green
socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin
stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears
at the door." In Lestrygonians, Bloom thinks
of the fishmonger Micky Hanlon as being rich but "ignorant
as a kish of brogues." A kish, Gifford notes, is "a
large square basket used for measuring turf," suggesting "that
if having one's brains in one's feet means stupidity, how much
more stupid a basket full of empty, rough shoes."
Given all these references, it seems certain that the old
brogues which Mulligan has handed down to Stephen do not allow
the poet to step about the town in style.
