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Theosophy
“Who Goes With Fergus?” is a 1892 lyric poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. In the poem, Yeats references the mythical Irish king and poet Fergus in order to encourage people to focus on the mystical beauty of the universe. In Yeats’s play The Countess Cathleen, this song is sung to soothe the title character after she sells her soul to the devil. Stephen Dedalus repeatedly thinks of this poem, which he sang to his mother on her deathbed. He especially remembers the lines, “And no more turn aside and brood / Upon love’s bitter mystery.”
“Who Goes With Fergus?” Quotes in Ulysses
The Ulysses quotes below are all either spoken by “Who Goes With Fergus?” or refer to “Who Goes With Fergus?”. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Episode 15: Circe
Quotes
(Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.)
BLOOM: (wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!
RUDY: (gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Ulysses LitChart as a printable PDF.
“Who Goes With Fergus?” Term Timeline in Ulysses
The timeline below shows where the term “Who Goes With Fergus?” appears in Ulysses. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Episode 1: Telemachus
...tower, asking for breakfast. Buck tells Stephen to stop brooding, then sings the Yeats song “Who Goes with Fergus ?” as he goes down the stairs. Stephen looks out at the sea and remembers...
(full context)
Episode 3: Proteus
...into his pocket. He repeats the line, “And no more turn aside and brood,” from Yeats’s “Who Goes with Fergus ?” But he starts to brood anyway: he laments having to wear Buck Mulligan’s secondhand...
(full context)
Episode 15: Circe
Stephen’s mother remembers a line that Stephen sang to her from “ Who goes with Fergus ?” Stephen asks his mother to tell him “the word known to all men,” and...
(full context)
...if Bloom is a black panther or a vampire, and he quotes incoherently from “ Who goes with Fergus ?” Bloom helps Stephen clean himself up, then notices that Stephen looks like his mother....
(full context)
