Cottericks' donkey

• Cothraige: (Irish) old Gaelic name for St Patrick (P/K split); it was wrongly etymologized as meaning “belonging to four” → The Four Old Men, or X

• donkey → The Four Old Men's ass
  • One of several allusions here (see → sycamore and have all you want) to Luke 19, in this case Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (or colt, or with both, depending on the gospel writer) that has never been ridden.

"Old Cotter, puffing away on his pipe (a detail repeated four times in little more than a page of text), spitting "rudely into the grate," and fixing the boy with "his little beady black eyes," talks appropriately of "faints and worms". In an interesting bit of wordplay, Old Cotter becomes the "old cutter" responsible for having Osiris hacked to pieces... "The Sisters" of Joyce's story, Nannie and Eliza [reenacting the roles of Isis and Nephthys], do not carry water in cracked jugs from the Nile (nor from the Liffey for that matter), but they do carry associations of libations and lamentation. As Eliza discusses the "beautiful corpse" of their deceased brother [Osiris], Nannie presses sherry and cream crackers on the guest mourners in a ritualistic presentation." (Susan Swartzlander: James Joyce's "The Sisters")