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582 J A M E S [ 1926-1929 ]A rather funny idea struck me that you might 'order' a piece and I woulddo it. The gentlemen of the brush and hammer seem to have worked thatway: Dear Sir. I should like to have an oily painting of Mr Tristan carvingraw pork for Cornish countrymen or an icebust of Herr Ham contemplatinghis cold shoulder.The offer was less extravagant than it seemed, for scarcely anything couldbe altogether alien to Finnegans Wake's universal history. The gameamused Miss Weaver, and since she was staying then near Penrith, shepicked on a bit of local legend as appropriate to his plan. On October 1she replied:You have made a curious request indeed! Here then followeth my 'order':To Messrs Jacques le Joyeux, Giacomo Jakob, Skeumas Sheehy andwhole Company:Sirs: Kindly supply the undersigned with one full length grave accountof his esteemed Highness Rhaggrick O'Hoggnor's Hogg Tomb as per photosenclosed and obligeYours faithfullyHenriette VeavereIt seems to me that that might come within the scope of your presentbook. There is a short monograph inside the church which says that thegrave was reputed to be that of a hero king (of Scotland, or Northumbria)whose name I 'misremember' but it began with O—Ossian or somethingin that way, not quite that I think. Such is my 'order' for this book. Butwhat I would really like is to place an order well in advance when anotherbook is under contemplation! But that time is far away.The wistful fall of the last sentences was not lost on Joyce, but he tookno official notice of them as he began work on the giant's grave which,as the pamphlet by the Reverend James Cropper said, was probably notreally a giant's grave at all. i know it is no more than a game,' he wroteher on October 16, 'but it is a game that I have learned to play in myown way. Children may just as well play as not. The ogre will come inany case.' 21The configuration of the giant's grave, with vertical stones at head andtoe and fourhorizontal stones between, suggested at once to Joyce theconfiguration of his hero Earwicker in his topographical aspect, his headat Howth, his toes at Castle Knock in the Phoenix Park, and also suggestedthe barrel of whiskey at the head and the barrel of Guinness at thefeet of Finnegan, whose modern incarnation Earwicker was to be. Hedecided to put the passage in 'the place of honour' at the beginning ofthe book to set the half-mythological, half-realistic scene. The firstdraft,composed alternately with readings in Anita Loos's Gentlemen PreferBlondes, was dated 2215 November 1926, and began in the middle of asentence just as the book was to end in the middle of the same sentence.