An obstreperous, i.e. noisy, mouth, converted by drunken
gaiety into an "obstropolos," threatens to cover up a
very distinctive sound, "Pflaap!," which tells every
ear in the vicinity that there is a "Blaze on." And
then the eyes catch up: "There she goes. Brigade!" The
Dublin Fire Brigade came into existence in 1862 and still
operates under that name. Someone in the group of tipsy
medicals, probably the same man who first heard the
distinctive sound, declares that it's down "Mount street
way," where the maternity hospital stands, and urges the
group to reverse direction on Holles Street and run back
toward the point from which they started: "Bout ship....
Cut up!... Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter,
race."
Every detail but one in this short paragraph seems fairly
easy to decipher. The one enigma is "Pflaap!" What
could that sound have to do with a fire engine? In their
dramatized account of the final pages of Oxen on JJON,
Clive Hart and Harald Beck suppose that it represents "the
sound of the whips or reins against the lower backs of the
horses. NB: there were no motorized fire engines in Dublin
in 1904." It does seem plausible that such a sound could
be produced by leather striking flesh, but there are several
problems with this reading. No matter how fiercely a fireman
might wield his whip, would the sound be loud enough to carry
two or more city blocks and be heard over the drunken chatter
of companions? Also, this sound makes someone instantly think
"Blaze on," even though many horse-drawn conveyances of
the time would have employed whips. Finally, why would the
last iteration of the sound contain twice as many "a" sounds
as the preceding three? Whips cannot be wielded so as to
prolong their smacking sound. Their retort is sharp, short,
and invariable.
A better explanation, first ventured by Jorn Barger and
affirmed by Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner, is that the sound
comes from "the brigade's horn" (1319). Better still is
Vincent Van Wyk's suggestion, in a personal communication,
that it is produced by a steam whistle. These whistles,
powered by excess steam from the engine's boiler, could be
prolonged simply by holding the throttle open. Joyce's passage
records two short blasts in succession, then another one after
a pause, and finally one long pull on the chain to make the
warning unmistakable: "Pflaaaap!" The videos posted
here should enable readers to judge the plausibility of Van
Wyk's claim. He notes that the "pfl" consonant cluster at the
beginning of the word is distinctively German. (Stephen revels
in similar German sounds in Scylla and Charybdis: "Pfuiteufel!")
Germans who speak carefully pronounce both the "p" and the "f"
distinctly in a quick burst. The distinctive effect of
combined plosives no doubt figured in Joyce's aural
imagination as he contrived to imitate a sudden expulsion of
steam.
The sound returns twice more in the paragraph that concludes
Oxen of the Sun. The men must be hearing two more pulls
of the steam whistle's chain as the engine, now out of sight,
continues on its course. But it also seems possible that Joyce
has contrived to make the sounds comment on the hyperbolic
religious declarations that the young men are mocking: "Sinned
against the light and even now that day is at hand when he
shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap!";
"You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you
want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap!" These
rough interruptions (rougher if produced by a raucous steam
whistle than if by a whip) may be heard as the narrative's
mocking dismissals of theistic claptrap––the equivalent of the
"raspberry" produced by sticking one's tongue between one's
lips and blowing out a fart sound. A similar effect ends Sirens
as Bloom's fart––"Pprrpffrrppffff"––deflates
Robert Emmet's grand dying words. There too, no intention is
required of the character. Joyce does it for him, using a
sound in the physical environment to mock overblown rhetoric.
The loud blasts of the whistle linger to the end of the
chapter, and they return one last time in Circe as "Lieutenant
Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request
sets fire to Bloom." The story of the fire engine is
also picked up in that chapter when Bloom sees a bright
distant glow across the river and wonders, "Aurora borealis
or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side
anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush."
But the young drunks quickly forget their impulse to run down
to Mount Street and gaze on the latest firefighting
technology. At the beginning of Oxen's final
paragraph, someone proclaims, "Denzille lane this way.
Change here for Bawdyhouse." The destination is now, once
again, the Westland Row train station, as it was when the men
first exited the pub, and Denzille Lane will get them there
about as quickly as Denzille Street would have before they
heard the sounds of the fire engine.
