Ulysses and the Mormons

James Joyce's novel Ulysses has been the bane of my existence for some time. I've tried to read it for over twenty five years and am amidst my most current assault on the text, having penetrated over 450 pages so far.

Amidst the Circe episode detailing Leopold Bloom's hallucinations in the Dublin red light district on June 16, 1904, Bloom is dreaming of his trial for harassing the good women of Dublin. The episode is written in the style of a play.

First Watch: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

Second Watch: (Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.

The Crier: (Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honorable . . .

(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.)

The Recorder: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken, Mr. Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him.

Wow! In less than a page Bloom is classified as a serial killer, a mormon, an anarchist, a forger, a bawd, a bigamist, a cuckold, a public nuisance, a political rabble-rouser, a white slave trader and a general pest, prompting him in the most Republican fashion to be sentenced to death. Bless the Courts of the United States that saw fit to allow such obscenity into our country back in December of 1933. While the 1933 fight raged over the obscenity trial, I think it is interesting to find the perception of the outside world of seventy years ago. James Joyce never got to see any "Give your children everything, give them your time" public service announcements. For him, "Mormon" was a derogatory term heaped upon the other charges against Bloom -- a term that denoted lasciviousness and wanton surrender to the appetites of the flesh.

Ahh, for the good old days of Mormonism.

P.S. I noticed the horns on the recorder and it made me think of the old rumors that Mormon's had horns. Does anyone know the origin of how Mormons came to have horns? Is it a carry over from the lascivious satyr or the horned cuckold?