In Wandering Rocks Patsy Dignam stands gazing at a
poster that shows "two puckers stripped to their pelts and
putting up their props," announcing that "Myler Keogh,
Dublin’s pet lamb, will meet sergeantmajor Bennett, the
Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns. Gob,
that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh, that's the
chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar
entrance, soldiers half price." Young Dignam dreams of going
to the fight, but then he looks more closely: "When is it? May
the twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over." Other
characters know about the fight and the role Blazes played in
it. In Cyclops Alf Bergan tells his companions that
Boylan turned the betting odds in his favor by starting a
false rumor that his man was drinking heavily: "He let out
that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds and he
swatting all the time." In Lestrygonians Nosey
Flynn reports the same story, noting that Boylan sequestered "the
little kipper down in the county Carlow...For near a
month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God
till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God,
Blazes is a hairy chap."
Myler Keogh was born in Donnybrook in 1867, the eldest son of
boxer and sawmill worker James "Clocker" Keogh. Vivien Igoe
notes that "For some of the 1890s" he was "middle-weight
champion boxer of Ireland. His first recorded fight was on 22
August 1899 and his last on 9 October 1903. Most of his fights
took place in the Antient
Concert Rooms, Dublin," where Joyce once performed in a
singing competition and where he set the story "A Mother."
Keogh died indigent and was buried without a tombstone, but in
2021 Dublin's Joyceans honored him with one. In a 15 June 2021
Irish Times article on the occasion, Frank McNally
suggests that Keogh's last fight may have happened in 1904
when "Jem Roche of Wexford knocked him out." McNally notes
that in his heyday, the 1890s, "the sport was in transition
from the bare-knuckle variety to Queensberry rules. But it was
still a rough business, even for the spectators." An Irish
Times report of Keogh's 1895 fight against Dan Kenny
describes how the spectators aggressively intervened because
the boxers "were initially too sedate"—in the words of the
reporter, "they appeared at first not to be inclined to kill
each other."
Joyce alludes to this ferocity in Cyclops when Alf
Bergan says that Keogh gave Bennett "the father and mother of
a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the
big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the
wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never
ate." The parody that follows characterizes the fight in the
more decorous language of a newspaper article: "It was a
historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were
scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns.
Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb
made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft." Describing
the fight blow by blow in facile journalistic phrases ("tapped
some lively claret," "receivergeneral of rights and lefts,"
"some neat work," "The men came to handigrips," "confident of
knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime," "his footwork a
treat to watch," "a brisk exchange of courtesies"), it
concludes with the story of Keogh prevailing with "a knockout
clean and clever"—the opposite result of the fight with Jem
Roche. Joyce tweaked chronology by having Keogh triumph at a
time when he had either left the ring or was being reminded
that he should have.
He also invented an opponent, giving him the name of Percy
Bennett, a British diplomat who was serving as consul-general
in Zurich in 1917 when Joyce became involved in an
embassy-supported project to stage English-language plays.
Colleagues knew Bennett as "Pompous Percy," Ellmann notes
(425), and he was "annoyed with Joyce for not having reported
to the consulate officially to offer his services in wartime,
and was perhaps aware of Joyce's work for the neutralist International
Review of Feilbogen and of his open indifference to the
war's outcome" (423). When Joyce fell out with consular worker
Henry Carr, who performed a role in The Importance of
Being Earnest, Bennett took Carr's side. Joyce
retaliated by reducing him to a "sergeantmajor" in the
Portobello barracks and made Carr, his subordinate, one of two
drunken soldiers who assault Stephen in Circe.
(Private Compton warns Private Carr, "Here, bugger off Harry.
Or Bennett'll have you in the lockup. Carr responds, "God fuck
old Bennett. He’s a whitearsed bugger. I don’t give a shit for
him.")
In a JJON essay, John Simpson observes that some 19th
century boxers adopted the ironic ring-name "lamb." One
English prize-fighter in particular, William Thompson, was
known by that name, perhaps because "His local support came
from a band of roughs known as the 'Nottingham Lambs'." "Pet,"
Simpson points out, is "one of the few high-profile English
words to derive from Gaelic." The phrase "pet lamb" came into
use in the 16th century to describe tame animals, and in the
19th century it became used in pugilistic circles to describe
a favorite boxer. Joyce evidences awareness of this trade
lingo in calling Keogh "Dublin's pet lamb," and
likewise in terming Bennett "the Portobello bruiser."
Simpson quotes newspaper references to the Bermondsey Bruiser
in 1859 and the Battersea Bruiser in 1905.
