There’s the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot.

What was your best throw, citizen?

Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.

Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.

Is that really a fact? says Alf.

Yes, says Bloom. That’s well known. Did you not know that?

So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower’s