THIRD CENSUS OF FINNEGANS WAKE xxv 
Noah. This passage also looks to the past of FW, cements the end to the beginning.
"It [FW] ends [see FW 628] in the middle of a sentence and begins [3.1] in
the middle of the same sentence." [Letters I, 246]. 
 Joyce made a key or part of a key to 3.1—14; I examined the key (AWN
II, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; III, 1); Skeleton Key is excellent here. But 3.1—14
is a stumbling block for readers wanting to get to Finnegan. Beginning reader
need only know that place is Howth (q.v.) and environs, or Dublin City and
its environs. Time is before the flood, before the fall. 
 
3.15—7.19 
 
 A 1001 tales are told of old father Finnegan's fall. Was thunder its cause
or its sound-effect?2 Finnegan's head, which is Howth, does not know the
answer or avoids answer by sending out a quest for his toes and other missing
members which are scattered about battlefields of Dublin and environs. 
 Once a good, humble man, Tim rises in the world from hod carrier to masterbuilder
(q.v.) who builds by the river Liffey (q.v.), tastes the creature, woman-whiskey
(q.v.; see also Jameson) and has a drunken vision. In it, he sees boy twins
born to himself (or himself divided), sees them as bucket and tool (q.v.),
his workmen on the rising tower of heaven-daring Babel or as God's saints
going up and down the tower of the Christian Church. The rising tower is
himself. As Mr Finn or Finn MacCool (q.v.), masterbuilder rises to epic hero,
is a gentleman like Adam (q.v.), "first to bare arms and a name," in the
ominous phrase of a well-known gravedigger. But the fall? 
 Risen to king, Finnegan falls as Philip (q.v.) Drunk. A wall was in erection,
he fell from the ladder—dead. 
 At Finnegan's wake, his "friends" (see Four, Twelve) mourn, praise, dance,
drink, persist in wanting to know about his fall. "Tim, why did you die?"
No answer, no movement from the body on the bier; but when Mrs Finnegan offers
for the guests' consumption, the corpse— loaves, fishes, ale—Finnegan
is not there. By silence, exile, cunning he avoids being a Christian sacrifice,
also avoids definition and question. There will be many such escapes. It
is my impression that he never is eaten. 
 
7.20—10.24 
 
 In our own time maybe we see the giant (q.v.) thunder-fish (see Finn, Fish,
Salmon) interred in the Dublin landscape, lying along the Liffey 
 
2. Thunder speaks ten times: pp.3,23,44,90, 113,257,314,332,414,424. Nine
times it says a hundred-letter word. The tenth it says 101 letters. Joyce
got the idea of thunder producing man's fall into civilization from Vico
(q.v.).