“Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo…”. Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s literary alter ego, both in the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and in Ulysses, is approximately Joyce’s age in this picture when Portrait begins.
The novel famously opens with Stephen’s father telling his son, little Stephen, a fairy-tale using a childlike language and babyish words. Joyce’s father used to tell this story to his son and used to call him ‘baby tuckoo’.
- James Joyce at the age of 3 (1885), with autograph > Buffalo University (NY) – James Joyce Collection
- Title page of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916 > coll. MJ
