uisce beatha - eau de vie

"Finnegan's Wake" is a ballad that arose in the 1850s in the music-hall tradition of comical Irish songs. 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, and is especially well-known to fans of The Clancy Brothers, who have performed and recorded it with Tommy Makem.

In the ballad, the hod-carrier Tim Finnegan, born "with a love for the liquor", falls from a ladder, breaks his skull, and is thought to be dead. The mourners at his wake become rowdy, and spill whiskey over Finnegan's corpse, causing him to come back to life and join in the celebrations. Whiskey causes both Finnegan's fall and his resurrection—whiskey is derived from the Irish phrase uisce beatha (pronounced [ˈiʃkʲə ˈbʲahə]), meaning "water of life".

Hear the tune for Finnegan's Wake ballade

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 Maggy 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 the war did soon engage

'Twas woman to woman and man to man,

Shillelagh law was all the rage

And the row and the ruction soon began.

Then Mickey Maloney ducked his head

When a flagon of whiskey flew at him,

It missed, and fallin' on the bed

The liquor scattered over Tim.

Tim revives! See how he rises!

Timothy rising from the bed

Sayin': "Whirl your liquor around like blazes!

Thanam o'n Dhoul! D'ye think I'm dead?"

"Finnegan's Wake" is famous for providing the basis of James Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake (1939), in which the comic resurrection of Tim Finnegan is employed as a symbol of the universal cycle of life. As whiskey, the "water of life", causes both Finnegan's death and resurrection in the ballad, so the word "wake" also represents both a passing (into death) and a rising (from sleep). Joyce removed the apostrophe in the title of his novel in order to suggest an active process in which a multiplicity of "Finnegans", that is, all members of humanity, fall and then wake and arise

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake