JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 001
The song that gave Finnegans Wake its title
2024-05-04
PODCAST AUDIO
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]
Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall
[Music fades out]
Adam Seelig: Welcome to the inaugural episode of James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. Published on the 4th of May, 1939, Joyce’s last novel celebrates its 85th anniversary today, the 4th of May 2024 (so May 4th is not just for Star Wars — in any case, May the 4th be with you). I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the readings you’ll soon hear performed by Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
Adam Seelig: Finnegans Wake is a production of One Little Goat Theatre Company. For the next five years, One Little Goat will film and record all 17 chapters (roughly 30 Hours) of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake before live audiences in various locations, screening and releasing them along along the way, with the aim of completing the entire book in time for its 90th birthday, May 4, 2029. One Little Goat Theatre Company is an official charity in Canada and the United States — if you’d like to support our work, please visit us online at www.OneLittleGoat.org to make a charitable donation. And if monetary support is not an option, you can still help this podcast by rating and reviewing it and by spreading the word. To get in touch, you’ll find our email address on the One Little Goat Theatre Company website and we’d love to hear from you.
[Music fades out]
Adam Seelig: 20 years ago, I opened Finnegans Wake, read 10 pages, and put back on shelf, utterly bewildered. Then early in the pandemic, during one of Toronto’s several lockdowns, Jordy Koffman, who teaches at George Brown College, invited me to read Finnegans Wake with him and his colleague Thomas Ponnaiah. I told Jordy, “You do know that it’s essentially impossible to read this book, right?” but he was undeterred, and at our first meeting via Zoom, as we took turns reading from the first page of the novel, I found it—and perhaps this was the result of so much isolation—I found it bringing a whole world to me. From the first word on that page—“riverrun”—Joyce’s text felt so expansive at a time when my own world had contracted. And it was lyrical, it was strange, it was funny and it was smart as all hell, and it was communal, it was great to be reading it as a group. What was missing, though, was someone who really knew Ireland, and Dublin in particular, given the Wake’s boundless references to Joyce’s native city. So I invited two friends who fit the bill: Cathy Murphy and Richard Harte, the latter of whom was born and raised in Dublin. And at our next meeting, when Richard took his turn to read, his delivery was so dynamic and free-flowing and funny, we all thought he’d read this book before. He hadn’t, but in a way it’s as if he’d been training for nearly a quarter century because Richard’s been reading & performing Joyce’s Ulysses annually for over 20 years with Toronto’s Bloomsday group, Anna Livia Productions.
As we continued to meet weekly, it became clear that the rest of us preferred hearing Richard read from the novel than hear ourselves stumble through the famously difficult text, because Richard speaks fluent Joyce, fluid Wake. And I was convinced then, as I am today, that he’s one of the people on planet earth to read this novel (and I promise you that’s not hyperbole). So I made a plan to record R’s renditions of the text. Initially I thought we’d do it as an audio book or podcast, but because Richard and I have done a lot of work together in the theatre and we love the live moment, the idea of going into an isolated studio after so much social isolation was not particularly appealing. Plus, reading Finnegans Wake without the reading group or an audience present would lose a sense of comedy (there’s a reason standup comedians do live albums with live audiences).
And that’s how we ended up turning to film — film has enabled us to capture R’s reading for a live audience and give us that feeling of being in the room with him, as does the audio from the films, which comprise our podcast episodes.
Ch01 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small—and at that time all masked—audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.
What is Finnegans Wake about? Well, Finnegans Wake is a different kind of book that requires a different kind of question. I can’t say what it’s about, but rather what it is. For Samuel Beckett, Joyce’s younger friend and admirer, the Wake “is not to be read – or rather it is not only to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to.” Joyce’s writing, Beckett insists, “is not about something; it is that something itself.”
Okay then, so what is Finnegans Wake? Let’s start with title. “Finnegan’s Wake” takes its name from a comedic 19th-Century Irish American folk song that goes something like this: Tim Finnegan goes to work a little bit drunk; climbs up a ladder and falls down to his death; at his wake a bar fight breaks out, and when someone chucks a bottle of whiskey across the room, it misses the intended target, scatters over Tim’s body laid out in the coffin, and before you know it, Tim has revived, he’s risen from the dead. Joyce, in his singular ability to read something into everything, saw in this folk song nothing less than an allegory for the rise and fall and rise again of humankind, and this a major theme of novel. So Joyce took the song title and removed the apostrophe in “Finnegan’s,” which does at least two things:
(1) it makes Finnegan plural. So this is a novel involving many Finnegans. Finnegan singular is a kind of Everyman; Finnegans plural are a kind of Everyone; and
(2) it transforms the “Wake” of the folk song title—that is, an Irish Wake celebrating the life of the deceased—it transforms it into a verb. Now we have Finnegans in the plural awaking, awakening.
So one gloss on Joyce’s title, “Finnegans (sans apostrophe) Finnegans Wake”, could be “Everyone wake up (and down, and up again)”
That cycle of rising and falling and rising again is a key to Finnegans Wake. So as a way into Joyce’s extraordinary, bananas novel, and as a way to kick off Chapter 1, I invited Irish-Canadian folk singer Kevin Kennedy to perform the “Finnegan’s Wake” folk song for a live audience before Richard started his reading.
Kevin Kennedy is a gem. He was born in Ireland in Westport, Co. Mayo, and moved to Canada in 1968. He’s performed for decades across eastern Canada and the United States, and like Richard Harte, he’s also part of Toronto’s Anna Livia Productions, who perform Joyce’s Ulysses every Bloomsday, June 16th. He’s recorded over 700 Irish folk songs, viewed and heard over 100,000 times on his YouTube Channel, “Kevin Kennedy — Irish.”
Okay so it’s time to welcome Kevin, and you, into my home for Kevin’s terrific rendition of the 19th-C Irish-American folk song, “Finnegan’s Wake.”
[Music: Kevin Kennedy sings “Finnegan’s Wake,” accompanying himself on guitar; the live audience sings and claps along at the choruses]
Kevin Kennedy sings:
[VERSE 1]
Tim Finnegan lived in Watling Street
A gentleman Irish mighty odd
He had a beautiful brogue both rich and sweet
And to rise in the world he carried a hod
Now Tim had a sort of a tipplin’ way
With a love for the liquor poor Tim was born
And to help him on with his work each day
He’d a drop of the craythur every morn
[CHORUS]
Whack fol de dah now dance to your partner
Welt the floor your trotters shake
Wasn’t it the truth I told you
Lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake
[VERSE 2]
One morning Tim felt rather full
His head felt heavy and it made him shake
He fell from the ladder and he broke his skull
And they carried him home his corpse to wake
They wrapped him up in a nice clean sheet
And they laid him out upon the bed
With a barrel of porter at his feet
And a gallon of whiskey at his head
[CHORUS]
[VERSE 3]
His friends assembled at the wake
And Mrs Finnegan called for lunch
First they brought in tea and cake
Then pipes, tobacco and brandy punch
Biddy O’Brien began to cry,
“Such a nice clean corpse did you ever see?
Arragh, Tim mavourneen, why did you die?”
“Arrah, hold your gob,” says Maggie McGhee!
[CHORUS]
[VERSE 4]
Then Maggie O’Connor took up the job
“Ah Biddy,” says she, “you’re wrong, I’m sure”
Biddy gave her a belt in the gob
And left her sprawlin’ on the floor
It was then the war did all engage
Woman to woman and man to man
Shillelagh law was all the rage
And a row and a ruction soon began
[CHORUS]
[VERSE 5]
Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head
When a flagon of whiskey flew at him
It missed and landed on the bed
The liquor scattered over Tim
Bedad he revives see how he rises
The bold Timothy risin’ in the bed
Sayin’, “Whirl your liquor around like blazes
By the thunderin’ Jaysus do you think I’m dead?”
[Audience applauds; Music ends]
Adam Seelig: That was the wonderful Kevin Kennedy performing the Irish American folk song “Finnegan’s Wake,” filmed and recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.
Join us for Episode 2 in a fortnight when Richard Harte begins his reading of Joyce’s legendary novel, Finnegans Wake. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes & trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org.
[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]
Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the gov’t of Ireland. Thank you for your support!
And thank you to the artists for this episode: Kevin Kennedy; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Laura Lakatosh; Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.
Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig. And thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.
One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org
Thank you for listening!
[Music fades out]