The copyist

• copyist: Shem the Penman, who writes the letter (File:Book.PNG) to his mother ALP’s dictation

Commentary

It should be remembered that when we emerged from the watercloset at the end of the Battle of Waterloo sequence (FW 010.25), our attention was drawn to the Hen, Biddy Doran, who was scavenging on the kitchen midden (or rubbish tip) in the backyard of HCE's tavern. In FW, this midden represents the buried past; its archaeological strata are like the leaves of a book that may be read by the enlightened. HCE's story is just one of those buried in the midden. Thus the midden is merely another form of File:Book.PNG, the siglum Joyce used in his manuscript to denote any "container of HCE" (e.g. Finnegans Wake itself, the coffin in which HCE is later buried, Dublin, the bed in HCE and ALP's bedroom, ALP's letter etc.).