Gifford suggests that to puke like a christian is "low slang
for to 'take one's drink like a man', to stand up without
flinching in competition with other heavy drinkers." This
sounds plausible enough, given Dubliners' fondness for
standing one another to endless rounds of drinks, but Gifford
cites no other instance in which the phrase has ever been so
used. Without any evidence of usage it can hardly be said that
Joyce was repeating a "slang" expression.
In
Colloquial Language in Ulysses (1994), Robert Dent
does cite use of such a phrase, but it entails a rather
different implication. In
The Adventures of Barney Mahoney
(1832), an Irish novel by Thomas and/or Marianne Croker, Barney
is asked if a trip over the Irish Sea agreed with him: "Oh!
mighty well intirely. It cleared me stummick, so it did, an’
guv’ me an appetite shoorely!” A woman asks, "Had you many
fellow-sufferers; that is, many passengers on board?” Barney
replies, "Aych, we had, ma’am, pigs, poor mortials. I niver seen
a pig sick afore; an’ be de powers bud
they rache all one
jist like a christian, so dey do, the dumb cratures!" The
word "rache," Dent notes, means "retch, vomit, puke," and in
this context christian is clearly a synonym for human being. If
the expression carries the same meaning in Joyce's novel, then
Bloom is thinking that when rats drink too much they vomit just
as people do.
Dent adopts a polemical tone in response to Gifford, saying
that, "On the contrary, 'puke' means 'puke' and 'christian'
is...'a human being as distinguished from one of the lower
animals'" (76). But it is not clear that Gifford is using
either word in a different sense. The only real difference in
his reading is that rats drink manfully (i.e., to the point of
vomiting) rather than simply suffering as people do when they
drink to excess (i.e., by vomiting). Slote, Mamigonian, and
Turner, however, do take "christian" in a different sense––not
as a synonym for "human being" but as an antonym for "Jewish."
Dublin's Jews, they note, tended to scorn the Dublin culture
of excessive drinking, as in a street rhyme quoted in Dermot
Keogh's Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland:
"Two pennies, two pennies," the Christian did shout
For a bottle of porter or Guinness's stout;
My wife's got no shawl and my kids have no shoes,
But I must have my money, I must have my booze.
This accords with Bloom's wary avoidance of alcohol
throughout the day. Only in Lestrygonians does he
allow himself any drink, and it is a single chaste glass of
burgundy rather than rounds of stout. But the Slote commentary
sheds no light on the central, puzzling detail in the sentence
it glosses: why think of rats puking like Christians?
Dent's discovery of a similar sentence in a 19th century novel
suggests that Bloom may be repeating an indigenous Irish adage
about animals vomiting just like humans. If so, then religious
antipathy may play no part in his thinking.
But even if Bloom is recalling a common saying, it is
entirely possible that it reminds him of the distasteful
habits of "christians." Kiberd, for one, hears an
"understandable animus" in the word. Associating Christians
with rats, a widely reviled urban animal, would be consistent
with such a view, and Bloom's thoughts about the stuff that
they pour down their throats every day magnify the disgust.
Awe at the "wonderful" size of Guinness's vats gives way to
thoughts of rats floating in those vats "Dead drunk on the
porter." Whether the rats are literally dead, "bloated
as big as a collie" and decomposing in the brew, or only
dead drunk and vomiting into it ("again" and again?),
the fantasy engenders aversion to the black stuff that
Gentiles are so fond of: "Imagine drinking that!" Like
so many other features of civilized life, this drink has a
dark underside: "Well, of course, if we knew all the
things."
