- Goloshes and Galoshin (Doctor Brown) in “The Dead”
Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:—It’s nothing very wonderful, but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.
(D 181)
In “The Dead,” why does the word “goloshes” (rubber overshoes) remind Gretta of the Christy Minstrels (D 181, 182)? The prevailing explanation has been that Gretta’s dactylic Galway pronunciation of “goloshes” is close to “golly shoes,” with “gollywog” as a possible connection.1
Eric Rosenbloom suggests, “Galoshins were the ‘guisers’ of Scottish solstice dramas. They blackened their faces with soot.”2 As I learned about the Galoshin performers in the Christmas-time mummer play of death and resurrection in Galoshins: The Scottish Folk Play by Brian Hayward,3 I became convinced that Rosenbloom had found the link [End Page 837] Joyce had in mind. Galoshin players, whose heyday was the latter half of the nineteenth century, according to Hayward, did traditionally blacken their faces (7, 47). Joyce was familiar with the mummer-play genre and may have seen such plays near Dublin, as Henry Glassie notes.4
Gretta sees the goloshes and evidently thinks of the Galoshins and then the Christy Minstrels. She recalls, perhaps vaguely, that the Christmas resurrection play with its blackface performers has an American counterpart in Christy Minstrel shows, whose players wear heavy dark makeup and galoshes or clogs. Gabriel is not amused because he senses what she is thinking: although he is pleased with his goloshes—“the latest” fashion “on the continent” (D 180, 181)—it may well be that, in her opinion, wearing them makes him akin to a Christy Minstrel performer.
Galoshes and Galoshins are pronounced similarly (except for the “n” in the latter), with the stress on the second, middle syllable (the amphibrach).5 The origin and meaning of the term Galoshins is an enigma, notes Hayward (72). Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary, however, defines “galoche” as “a wooden shoe or patten, made all of a piece, without any lachet, or type of leather, and worn by the poor clown in winter.”6 Hayward believes that the “poor clown” could be a “begging comedian” and notes that Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 dictionary also defines the verb “galocher” as “[t]o behave himself rudely, uncivily, rustically to play the clowne; also to trot, or wander undiscreetly up and down” (78). Thus, Joyce’s linking of “goloshes” to poor clowns in clogs is rooted in the history of the word.
The Galoshin character “Doctor Brown” is a resurrector figure who uses drops of liquor as a restorative; his echoes are found in Mr. Browne in “The Dead.” The core death-and-resurrection plot of the Scottish Galoshin play is shared with English and Irish mummer plays: “a protagonist meets an antagonist in direct combat. One of the two falls and is subsequently revived by a third party who acts as a doctor.”7 “Doctor Brown” is a common name for the Scottish Galoshin physician, according to Hayward, unlike the mummer doctors in England and Ireland (56). E. K. Chambers notes, “In the north and the west midlands the Doctor is often: ‘Dr. Brown, The best doctor in the town.’”8 Glassie points out the mummer doctor’s rhyming “sing-song” (32), which is perhaps reflected in Mr. Browne’s “I hope … I’m brown enough for you because, you know, I’m all brown” (D 200). The doctor’s cure, Hayward writes, using drops of liquid, a magic potion, or medicine from a bottle, has overtones of liquor (“juniper” is a “fruit base for making gin”) and sexual rejuvenation (57).
Mr. Browne of “The Dead” may have been based on Joyce’s Protestant relative by that name (JJII 246), and the “allusion to his [End Page 838] religion” in the story may hint at the “doctor” role he assumes (D 194). Mr. Browne is characterized by being paired with and drinking with Freddy, his references to doctors, and his pouring of whisky. As soon as he appears, he begins to drink the liquor: “Then he … [took] hold of the decanter [and] filled out for himself a goodly measure...