dBranno someone somewhere must have studied and tried to interpret the imagery, but not me!

Joyce is one of the most inaccessible (to me) writers I have read. My shortcoming, not his.

Your Humpty Dumpty tale is in his short story collection The Dubliners, which I ploughed through, and I found the Ballard of P.O'R to be the light relief moment I had been hoping for all the way through the book. You're right on the word play.

Joyce nigh on invented his own language. The other stories in the book are nothing like P.O'R, but well worth a read, each one focussing on the side of Dublin that made him leave the place.