"Finnegan's Wake" is a ballad which arose in perhaps the 1850s in the vaudeville tradition of comical Irish songs. It is famous for being the basis of James Joyce's masterwork, Finnegans Wake, where the comic resurrection becomes symbolic of a universal cycle of life. Whiskey, which brought both Finnegan's fall and his resurrection, is derived from Irish uisce beatha -- 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. It also featured as the climax of the primary storyline in Philip José Farmer's award-winning novella, Riders of the Purple Wage. The song is a staple of the Irish folk-music group, The Dubliners, who have played it on many occasions and included it on several albums.
