The second Cyclops parody sets its visions of natural bounty "in the land of holy Michan," site of the produce markets in a blighted northside neighborhood, but it immediately broadens its focus to Ireland's lush countryside and imagines a staggering array of flora and fauna produced by the country's lands and waters. This expansion of reality threatens to burst the bounds of reality, nowhere more so than in a digression on the land's "lofty trees": "the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus." Trees are not sold in markets, and only one of these four has any connection to Ireland. The others are exotic species inspired by a passage in the Bible.

Ecclesiasticus, a 2nd century BCE collection of ethical writings omitted from the Hebrew Bible but deemed canonical by Catholics, compares Wisdom to valuable trees. Joyce knew this passage in the Latin of the Vulgate Bible. In part 3 of A Portrait of the Artist, Stephen recalls verses 24.17-20:

Quasi cedrus exaltata sum in Libanon et quasi cupressus in monte Sion. Quasi palma exaltata sum in Gades et quasi plantatio rosae in Jericho. Quasi uliva speciosa in campis et quasi platanus exaltata sum juxta aquam in plateis. Sicut cinnamomum et balsamum aromatizans odorem dedi et quasi myrrha electa dedi suavitatem odoris.

The Douay-Rheims Bible, translated from the Vulgate and published in 1582 and 1609-10 to counter Protestant translations, gives an English version:

     And I took root in an honourable people, and in the portion of my God his inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of saints.
     I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress tree on mount Sion.
     I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades, and as a rose plant in Jericho:
     As a fair olive tree in the plains, and as a plane tree by the water in the streets, was I exalted.
     I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon. and aromatical balm: I yielded a sweet odour like the best myrrh:
     And I perfumed my dwelling as storax, and galbanum, and onyx, and aloes, and as the frankincense not cut, and my odour is as the purest balm.
     I have stretched out my branches as the turpentine tree, and my branches are of honour and grace.
     As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches (24.16-23).

The Cyclops parody selects two tall trees from this array of precious plants. Cedrus libani, the famous "Lebanonian cedar," is a majestic conifer of the eastern Mediterranean that does not grow anywhere near Ireland. According to the Hebrew Bible its valuable wood was used to construct the Temple in Jerusalem (reflected by association with the "cypress tree on mount Sion"), and today it is an enduring emblem of Lebanon, featured on the nation's flag. The "planetree," Platanus orientalis, is a longlived riverine tree which grows in southeastern Europe as far west as the Balkans, and in southwestern Asia as far east as Iran. Greeks and Persians have long planted them in urban settings near water sources, a fact the writer of Ecclesiasticus knows: "a plane tree by the water in the streets."

Farther still from anything Irish is the "eugenic eucalyptus." Eucalyptus species are native to southeast Australia and Tasmania. Joyce apparently included them because the biblical list focuses on pleasing and medicinal aromas: "cinnamon," "aromatical balm," "myrrh," "perfume," "balm," "turpentine," "odour." Eucalyptus leaves are intensely aromatic, and their oils have antiseptic uses. Gifford notes that the plant is "eugenic" because "a tincture made from opium, cinnamon, and kino, an exudation of the eucalyptus, was widely used as a douche in the early twentieth century."

Of the four trees, only the "sycamore" grows in Ireland, and even here qualifications and uncertainties abound. The name usually refers to Platanus occidentalis, a north American tree of the same genus as the plane tree, and it is often applied to the London plane tree, a hybrid of the two Platanus species which began life when plant hunters brought both to England, probably in the 17th century, and which became a brilliantly successful London street tree. Trees called sycamores were imported into Ireland from continental Europe at about the same time to provide shade on estates and they spread widely, but these trees are actually maples: Acer pseudoplatanus, or "false-plane maple." The Latin species name may reflect the fact that London plane trees have leaves that look a lot like maple leaves, and the common name may reflect the fact that Irish landowners thought they were importing trees similar to London's sycamores.

Joyce thus includes one tree endemic but not native to Ireland in a list that contains two Mideastern trees celebrated in the Bible and one Australian tree whose odors evoke biblical balsams, all of them in the service of singing the praises of Ireland's "arboreal world." This is strange stuff—patriotic grandeur that deliberately undoes itself by mongrel excess. Readers will find that the mad method becomes a fixture of Cyclops. The "hero" of the next parody is associated with a vast panoply of Irish mythological figures whose number includes Goliath, Christopher Columbus, and Patrick W. Shakespeare.

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John Hunt 2025