193. Cod him up to the two eyes

Ulysses isn't usually thought of as a legal thriller on a par with, say, Grisham, but it does unexpectedly contain a legal anecdote with the ring of observed courtroom reality.  After describing the unfortunate Denis Breen, "passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher [the undertaker] with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin", the anonymous narrator of the "Cyclops" episode picks up the story:

--How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

--Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.

--Who tried the case? says Joe.

--Recorder, says Ned.

--Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.

--Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench.

--Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:

--A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say?

--Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.

--And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you,sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.

The theme of the "Cyclops" episode is prejudice - the refusal to see -  as exemplified by truly awful character of "the Citizen."  The weeping judge's refusal to listen to the (Jewish) landlord fits right in.  But what strikes me as truest to life is the contempt with which the beneficiaries of the judge's prejudices regard their benefactor.  Prejudiced judges are hated by one side, but despised by the other.

(For definitions of some of the slang from the passage, check out this list.)