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2 4 8 J A M E S [ 1907 ]checked. The servant girl punctures his blithe assumption that everyoneis happily in love and on the way to the altar. He is not sure enough ofhimself to put out of his head the slurs he has received long ago; so inspite of his uxorious attitude towards Gretta he is a little ashamed of herhaving come from the west of Ireland. He cannot bear to think of hisdead mother's remark that Gretta was 'country cute,' and when Miss Ivorssays of Gretta, 'She's from Connacht, isn't she?' Gabriel answers shortly,'Her people are.' He has rescued her from that bog. Miss Ivors's suggestion,a true Gaelic Leaguer's, that he spend his holiday in the IrishspeakingAran Islands (in the west) upsets him; it is the element in hiswife's past that he wishes to forget. During most of the story, the west ofIreland is connected in Gabriel's mind with a dark and rather painfulprimitivism, an aspect of his country which he has steadily abjured bygoing off to the continent. The west is savagery; to the east and south liepeople who drink wine and wear galoshes.Gabriel has been made uneasy about this attitude, but he clings to itdefiantly until the ending. Unknown to him, it is being challenged by thesong, 'The Lass of Aughrim.' Aughrim is a little village in the west notfar from Galway. The song has a special relevance; in it a woman whohas been seduced and abandoned by Lord Gregory comes with her babyin the rain to beg for admission to his house. It brings together the peasantmother and the civilized seducer, but Gabriel does not listen to thewords; he only watches his wife listening. Joyce had heard this balladfrom Nora; perhaps he considered also using Tom Moore's 'O, Ye Dead'in the story, but if so he must have seen that 'The Lass of Aughrim'would connect more subtly with the west and with Michael Furey's visitin the rain to Gretta. But the notion of using a song at all may well havecome to him as the result of the excitement generated in him by Moore'ssong.And now Gabriel and Gretta go to the Hotel Gresham, Gabriel firedby his living wife and Gretta drained by the memory of her dead lover.He learns for the firsttime of the young man in Galway, whose nameJoyce has deftly altered from Sonny or Michael Bodkin to Michael Furey.The new name implies, like the contrast of the militant Michael andthe amiable Gabriel, that violent passion is in her Galway past, not inher Dublin present. Gabriel tries to cut Michael Furey down. 'What washe?' he asks, confident that his own profession of language teacher (whichof course he shared with Joyce) is superior; but she replies, 'He was inthe gasworks,' as if this profession was as good as any other. Then Gabrieltries again, 'And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, wasit?' He hopes to register the usual expressions of pity, but Gretta silencesand terrifies him by her answer, i think he died for me.'* Since Joyce* Adaline Glasheen has discovered here an echo of Yeats's nationalistic play, Cathleen niHoulihan (1902), where the old woman who symbolizes Ireland sings a song of 'yellowhairedDonough that was hanged in Galway.' When she is asked, 'What was it brought