Finnegan's Wake
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"Finnegan's Wake" is a song, called a street-ballad, that arose perhaps in the 1850s. It is one of several mock-Irish stage songs that were very popular in 19th-century American vaudeville. It is famous for being parodied in James Joyce's masterwork, Finnegans Wake, where the comic resurrection becomes symbolic of a universal cycle of life. The whiskey that brought both Finnegan's fall and his rearising is from the Gaelic uisge beatha (pronounced ish-guh-ba-ha), meaning "water of life." So too, the word "wake" is both of a passing and of a new rising. Joyce removed the apostrophe in the title to assert an active process in which a multiplicity of "Finnegans," that is, all of us, wake, that is, arise after falling.
- Finnegan's Wake
- Finnegan's Wake
- Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street
- A gentleman Irish, mighty odd;
- He'd a beautiful brogue so rich and sweet
- And to rise in the world he carried a hod.
- Now Tim had a sort o' the tipplin' way
- With a love of the liquor poor Tim was born
- And to help him on with his work each day
- He'd a drop of the craythur ev'ry morn.
- Chorus
- Whack fol the dah now dance to your partner
- Welt the flure, your trotters shake;
- Wasn't it the truth I told you
- Lots of fun at Finnegan's wake!
- One mornin' Tim was rather full
- His head felt heavy which made him shake,
- He fell from the ladder and broke his skull
- And they carried him home his corpse to wake.
- They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet
- And laid him out across the bed,
- With a gallon of whiskey at his feet
- And a barrel of porter at his head.
- His friends assembled at the wake
- And Mrs. Finnegan called for lunch,
- First they brought in tea and cake
- Then pipes, tobacco and whiskey punch.
- Biddy O'Brien began to cry
- "Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see?
- "Arrah, Tim, mavourneen, why did you die?"
- "Ah, shut your gob" said Paddy McGee!
- Then Biddy O'Connor took up the job
- "O Biddy," says she, "You're wrong, I'm sure":
- Biddy gave her a belt in the gob
- And left her sprawlin' on the floor.
- And then a mighty war did rage
- 'Twas woman to woman and man to man,
- Shillelagh law did all engage
- And the row and the ruction soon began.
- Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head
- When a naggin of whiskey flew at him,
- It missed, and fallin' on the bed
- The liquor scattered over Tim.
- Bedad he revives! See how he rises!
- Timothy rising from the bed:
- "Whirl your whiskey around like blazes!
- Thanam o'n Dhoul! D'ye think I'm dead?"
(An alternate choice for Thanam o'n Dhoul (your souls to the devil) is Thunderin' Jaysus.)