They drove in a jingle across Cork while it was still early morning and Stephen finished his sleep in a bedroom of the Victoria Hotel. The bright warm sunlight was streaming through the window and he could hear the din of traffic. His father was standing before the dressingtable, examining his hair and face and moustache with great care, craning his neck across the waterjug and drawing it back sideways to see the better. While he did so he sang softly to himself with quaint accent and phrasing:
’Tis youth and folly Makes young men marry, So here, my love, I’ll No longer stay. What can’t be cured, sure, Must be injured, sure, So I’ll go to Amerikay
My love she’s handsome, My love she’s bony: She’s like good whisky When it is new; But when ’tis old And growing cold It fades and dies like The mountain dew.
The consciousness of the warm sunny city outside his window and the tender tremors with which his father’s voice festooned the strange sad happy air, drove off all the mists of the night’s ill humour from Stephen’s brain. He got up quickly to dress and, when the song had ended, said:
―That’s much prettier than any of your other come-all-yous .
―Do you think so? asked Mr. Dedalus.
―I like it, said Stephen.