"Berkeley Road" and "Berkeley Street" (pronounced BARK-lee)
are two short, connected streets at the west end of Eccles Street. The former
runs south for a couple of blocks from the North Circular
Road, going past the Mater
Misericordiae hospital and Eccles. Angling left, it then
becomes Berkeley Street, which runs southeast for half a dozen
blocks until, crossing Blessington Street, it becomes Mountjoy
Street. In Calypso "Quick warm sunlight came
running from Berkeley road" to greet Bloom as he leaves Dorset Street and
approaches his home. In Hades, a couple of hours
later, the funeral carriage in which he is riding "turned into
Berkeley Street" after proceeding up Blessington.
The detail in Calypso about sunlight running from
Berkeley Road to meet Bloom requires some explaining, since he
is walking toward the road in a generally westerly direction,
away from the sun rising in the east. Gifford offers a cogent
explication: "As the cloud
moves eastward on the prevailing westerly wind, sunlight moves
along Eccles Street toward Bloom." The effect is similar to
one at the beginning of Telemachus, where the
Wicklow mountains are
described as "awaking" because the sun rising in the east
first illuminates their tops and then works down their flanks.
In Hades the funeral cortège travels north by northwest from
Sandymount to Glasnevin. After crossing the river and moving
up O'Connell Street to
the Rotunda at Rutland
(now Parnell) Square, it climbs "more slowly the hill
of Rutland square" in a slightly more westerly
direction, and, heading still more to the west, rolls "swiftly
along Blessington Street." Then it turns right into
Berkeley Street, where it encounters a lot of activity: "a
streetorgan near the Basin sent over and after them a
rollicking rattling song of the halls. . . . The Mater
Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down
there. Big place. . . . A divided drove of branded
cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded
hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony
croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep
bleating their fear. . . .
— Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on
their flanks. / Huuuh! out of that! . . . The carriage moved
on through the drove."
The photograph reproduced here shows a scene in Berkeley
Street that appears quite congested enough without the
involvement of livestock. Bloom's idea of taking live animals
out of the mix by running "a tramline from the
parkgate to the quays" seems quite sensible.