When Bloom's coronation and apotheosis in Circe devolve
into regicide and immolation, a group of "IRISH EVICTED
TENANTS" holding shillelaghs threaten to beat him with a
different kind of rustic weapon: "Sjambok him!" The
sjambok is a stout South African whip made of rhinoceros or
hippopotamus hide. The appearance of this highly exotic word
represents one more way in which the events of the Second Boer
War were still resonating in Irish consciousness in 1904. In
particular, the incident suggests a parallel between the
British scorched-earth
policy against the Boers and the waves of eviction that
drove Irish peasants off the land in the 19th century.
Sjambok
is the Afrikaans name for short leather whips used for driving
cattle in parts of southern Africa. They were essential tools
for the Voortrekkers who migrated from the Cape Colony toward
new grazing lands to the northeast in the 1830s and 40s. This
so-called Great Trek produced self-governed Boer republics, the
Orange Free State and the South African Republic (the
Transvaal), that became objects of British imperial coveting
starting in the early 1870s, leading to two wars in 1880-81 and
1899-1902. In addition to driving cattle, sjamboks were
effective at killing snakes, repelling attacking dogs, and
administering punishment to slaves and other natives. Their use
by policemen in modern South Africa has become notorious.
Joyce's knowledge of the word suggests that he was aware of an
incident during the Second Boer War involving
Arthur Griffith. Griffith lived
in South Africa in 1897-98, supported the Boers in their
resistance to British imperial domination, and greatly admired
Paul Kruger. Upon his return to Ireland in 1899 he brought a
sjambok with him, and in 1900, as a leader of Dublin resistance
to the now full-blown war, it figured in his political
activities. In
Forgotten Protest: Ireland and the Anglo-Boer
War (UHF, 1989), Donal McCracken reports that one Ramsey
Colles, editor of the
Irish Figaro, viciously attacked
Griffith's ally
Maud Gonne in
print on April 7. "
The next day Arthur Griffith took the
sjambok he had brought home from South Africa, and visited
Colles in his office. A fight ensued, the outcome of which
is uncertain, both sides later claiming to have 'thrashed' the
other. The final upshot of the incident was that Griffith, on
refusing to undertake to a magistrate to keep the peace toward
Colles, was sent to prison for two weeks" (70).
As hard-working and pious (albeit Calvinist) pastoralists
defending their way of life—and their homes—against a modern
war machine bent on handing the region's mineral resources
over to industrialists and bankers like Cecil Rhodes and the
Rothschilds, the Boers became even more popular in parts of
rural Ireland than in Dublin. There is a clearly discernible
logic, then, to Joyce's homeless peasants assaulting Bloom
with a Boer truncheon. They may be headed for America rather
than concentration camps,
but they have a common enemy.
