Allsopp's, an English brewing company founded in Burton-on-Trent in the 18th century (and acquired by Samuel Allsopp in 1807) is mentioned twice in Joyce's novel. In Lestrygonians Bloom thinks of Dubliners having a "bottle of Allsop" at lunch. A much more puzzling reference comes in Cyclops when Lenehan says that he will have "An imperial yeomanry," and John Wyse Nolan translates this to the barman as "a hands up." Terry confirms the order: "bottle of Allsop. Right, sir." For anyone familiar with Allsopp's, "hands up" should probably not be too hard to fathom, as their bottles and ads all display the image of a upraised red hand. But "imperial yeomanry" takes obscurity a long step further. It links the image of raised hands to British soldiers surrendering during the second Boer War.

In a JJON note, Harald Beck observes that "A raised red hand had been the Allsopp Brewery’s trademark since 1862. In 1904 the company reminded the public that their Light Dinner Ale was also called 'Hand Up' and was thus registered and protected at the Patent Office." In Ireland the red hand was additionally associated with the O'Neills of Ulster. A little earlier in Circe the Citizen has sounded the fierce clan's "tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu" (Red Hand to Victory) and raised a glass "to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves" (i.e., the English). But the two red hands have different histories. Beck notes that although it "was a common misconception in Ireland" to hear reference to the O'Neills in Allsopp's trademark, in fact it was "simply a traditional sign to signal that the inn in question sold ale of good quality." The Allsopp's company website cites "an old story that inn­keepers sometimes displayed an open hand to indicate that their ale was in good condition and ready for sale, and this is where we believe that our Red Hand derives from."

But the image acquired new resonances from language coming out of the Boer War. One of these terms was "uphander." Beck notes (with thanks to four industrious colleagues) that Joyce's notesheets from the summer of 1919 pair "uphander" and "imp. yeom." and that an earlier draft of the Cyclops passage has Alf Bergin ordering an "Uphander... Imperial yeomanry, Terry." In Londinismen, a German dictionary of English slang published in a revised edition in 1903, Hans Baumann observes that "uphander" was "first used in the South-African war in 1900" as a term for soldiers who surrender in battle and obey the command, "Hands up!” The term could apply to soldiers on either side, but the men in Barney Kiernan's are thinking of the Imperial Yeomanry Cavalry, a volunteer unit in the British army which suffered many defeats in South Africa, especially in the battle of Lindley in May 1900. Under the headline "Hands Up," a 14 March 1902 article in the Motherwell Times bemoaned the fact that "An unprecedented and painful feature of the South African War has been the constant succession of surrenders to the enemy of unwounded officers and men."

Irishmen sympathetic to the Boers in their overmatched fight against the imperial war machine apparently seized on this image of British troops raising their hands in surrender. Late in Circe, when a "bawd" proclaims that "The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!," a "rough" mockingly replies, "Ay! Hands up to De Wet." This image, it seems, briefly became linked in Dubliners' imaginations with the raised hands on Allsopp's beer bottles. Beck and his collaborators have turned up an article from the 15 July 1905 Evening Telegraph about "a court case involving a Dublin county publican who had sold beer of low quality under Allsopp’s trade name." The article's headline reads, "Allsopp's 'Hand Up'. A Reminiscence of the Imperial Yeomanry." 

Some Irishmen, many of them from Ulster, enlisted in the Imperial Yeomanry. Among the 530 British soldiers captured at Lindley on 27 May 1900 was James Craig, the future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. The Ulster connection may add still another quirky insight into the evolution of these strange ways of referring to beer. Beck writes, "The fact that troops of the 60th (Belfast) Regiment of Yeomanry wore a badge on their helmets featuring the red hand of Ulster on a white shield may also have played a role in the coinage, just as the fact that the directors of Samuel Allsopp and Sons Ltd., sent 600 bottles of their light and dark lager for the use of 500 volunteers to the Cape in January 1900." Irish volunteers in the imperial war effort would have earned particular scorn from Irish nationalists like those in the bar. 

As it happens, Boers in South Africa were expressing similar feelings of scorn with a word remarkably similar to "Uphander." In a personal communication Vincent Van Wyk notes that the Afrikaans term hensopper (hands-upper) was widely applied to the National Scouts, Boers who had been recruited into British military units after surrendering in battle. Nationalists despised these hensoppers as traitors and give-uppers, much as Irish nationalists despised the treachery and ineffectuality of the Imperial Yeomanry. The English term that Joyce used in an early draft of the Cyclops passage seems close enough to "handsuppers" to suppose that English and Irish troops coming back from South Africa may have carried a linguistic parasite with them.

The head-spinning linguistic connections do not stop there. Van Wyk notes that a kind of near-rhyme obtains between the Hands-Up beer that John Wyse Nolan orders and the All-Sopps that Terry delivers. This is not the kind of thing that would have escaped Joyce's notice. The strangely intricate linguistic associations in which he turned his mind loose to recreate were not products of sheer will; he regularly found them inscribed in the world around him. Van Wyk spots another such uncanny coincidence in the historical record. When Lord Kitchener met with the turncoat National Scouts, it was in Belfast––"Belfast, South Africa that is!"

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John Hunt 2024