Joyce indicated that Oxen of the Sun would develop embryonically through a chronological succession of prose styles inspired by writers of English prose, but his opening sentences have little to do with English or with written prose. The first paragraph, which echoes hymns chanted in late Roman fertility rites, is made up of three repetitive, percussive, incantatory sentences compounded of three Celtic, English, and Latin words meaning something like "Let us go rightward to Holles Street." It is followed by two more incantatory paragraphs, each of them performing a tripling repetition of a threefold sentence. This exotic 3x3x3 linguistic structure forms a kind of sacred preamble to the drama of conception, gestation, and birth and a kind of pre-English frame for the evolution of English prose style.

According to Stuart Gilbert's James Joyce's Ulysses (1930), Joyce wrote the first three paragraphs "in the manner of the Fratres Arvales" (277). The Arval Brothers were a "college" of twelve Roman priests who conducted ceremonies dedicated to the Lares, Dea Dia, Ceres, and other gods concerned with fertility and good harvests. Thornton and Gifford, citing evidence uncovered in Theodor Mommsen's History of Rome (1887), add that the ceremonies involved an incantatory hymn written in the early 3rd century AD, most of whose lines sounded three times (I.294). The hymn concluded with a Triumphe or "Hurrah," which Joyce imitates with "Hoopsa"––according to Gilbert, "the triumphant cry of the midwife as, elevating the new-born, she acclaims its sex" (291). The overall effect of these three paragraphs, then, is to celebrate the mystery of childbirth.

"Deshil" is an Anglicization of the Irish deasil (one of many slight orthographical variants), which carries the general meaning of "turning to the right" or "turning toward the sun." Joyce may have found it in P. W. Joyce's A Social History of Ancient Ireland (2 vols., London and Dublin, 1913, first published in shorter versions in 1903 and 1906). Gifford cites this work as authority for the word's use as "a ritual gesture to attract good fortune, and an act of consecration when repeated three times" (1.301). Slote, who detects many other debts to Joyce's Social History in the opening paragraphs of Oxen, instead quotes here from the OED: "towards the right...in the same direction as the hands of a clock, or the apparent course of the sun (a practice held auspicious by the Celts)." In Hart and Hayman's Critical Essays, J. S. Atherton adds that deiseal or deisil "when used by itself, means 'May it be right!' or 'May it go well!' and is thus very suitable to begin a difficult task. It also means 'Going to the right', or going in a clockwise or sunwise direction––the opposite to the widdershins used by witches––and so the natural and lucky way to proceed" (315).

"Eamus" is Latin for "Let us go," so Deshil Eamus means something like "Let us turn to the right," or possibly "toward the sun," which, though gone from the sky at 10 PM, does figure prominently in the chapter's second paragraph as a god dedicated to fertility. This word appears to nod toward the fact that a collection of men are assembling in the common room of the Holles Street hospital. Some of them are already in the hospital (several medical students and residents, several of their acquaintances, Stephen Dedalus), but others converge on this room as the chapter proceeds. Mulligan drops in after leaving the soiree in George Moore's house and running into Alec Bannon in the street. The two of them are interested only in company, but Bloom comes to the hospital seeking news of Mrs. Purefoy. It would seem that the ceremonious incantation of "Let us go in the hope that it may be right!" applies particularly to him.

"Holles" Street is the location of Dublin's National Maternity Hospital. This place consecrated to facilitating childbirth will be the site where the mysteries of fertility are played out. Slote suggests that Deshil Holles may also echo Denzil Holles, the Earl of Clare, after whom the street was named. At the end of Oxen, the young men spill out of the hospital and walk past "Denzille lane" to Burke's pub on the corner of Holles Street and Denzille Street.

Joyce's decision to start the chapter with an Irish word suggests that his imitation of English prose styles may be not only appreciative but also somehow subversive. The next three paragraphs of Oxen continue to focus on the Latin that was spoken in Britain and Ireland before English came on the scene, and they address ancient Irish traditions of practicing medicine and founding hospitals. The language of the 12th century conquerors is thus presented as intruding into existing cultural traditions, merging with them, transforming and being transformed. 

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