Buttended a bland old isaac

• Joyce's letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver of 15 November 1926: "Parnell ousted Isaac Butt from leadership"

• Isaac Butt:
  • Third Census of Finnegans Wake
  • Wikipedia
  • Re: Etymology as a leisure actrivity & The 'Wake'

• butt: (n) 1. "thick end," O.E. buttuc "end, small piece of land," akin to O.N. butr "short." In sense of "human posterior" it is recorded from 1450. Meaning "remainder of a smoked cigarette" first recorded 1847; 2. "target of a joke," 1616, originally "target for shooting practice" (1345), from O.Fr. but "aim, goal, end," perhaps from butte "mound, knoll," from Frank. *but (cf. O.N. butr "long of wood"), which would connect it with butt(1). [1]

• butt: (v) "hit with the head," c.1200, from Anglo-Norm. buter, from O.Fr. boter "to thrust against," from V.L. *bottare "thrust," or from Frankish (cf. O.N. bauta, Low Ger. boten "to strike, beat"), from P.Gmc. *butan, from PIE base *bhau- "to strike" (see batter (v.)). To butt in "rudely intrude" is Amer.Eng., 1900. [2]
  • Genesis 27:35-36: "And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing. / And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?"

• buttended → bartended
  • Genesis 27:25: "And he said, Bring [it] near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought [it] near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine, and he drank."

• buttended: struck with the butt-end of a gun

• Butt Bridge: a bridge over the River Liffey in Dublin

• butted → goat → Jacob's goatskin (Genesis 27) → the zodiacal sign of Capricorn?

• pretended → scad
• bed-ended: Jacob sat at Isaac's bed when he tricked him