An earlier popular song, John Brougham's "A Fine Ould Irish Gintleman," also included a verse in which an apparently dead alcoholic was revived by the power of whiskey.
[4] In more recent times, "Finnegan's Wake" was a staple of the Irish folk-music group the Dubliners, who played it on many occasions and included it on several albums, and is especially well known to fans of the Clancy Brothers, who performed and recorded it with Tommy Makem.
Whiskey causes both Finnegan's fall and his resurrection—whiskey is derived from the Irish phrase uisce beatha (pronounced [ˈɪʃcə ˈbʲahə]), meaning "water of life".
Joyce removed the apostrophe in the title of his novel to suggest an active process in which a multiplicity of "Finnegans", that is, all members of humanity, fall and then wake and arise.
[15][16] "Finnegan's Wake" is featured at the climax of the primary storyline in Philip José Farmer's award-winning novella, Riders of the Purple Wage.