for the cosmic "everyman" Finnegan (HCE) of Joyce's final novel. She also identified for the first time in 80 years since the publication of the indecipherable novel, the critical reference to French's death in Liverpool in a key chapter of Finnegans Wake, a crucial discovery, unlocking much of Joyce's impenetrable novel in her landmark new book Sounds of Manymirth on the Night's Ear Ringing: Percy French (1854–1920) His Jarvey Years and Joyce's Haunted Inkbottle. by Carmen Eblana AE productions. The title of Lowry's book is taken from a line from Finnegans Wake wherein Joyce parodied two of Thomas Moore's melodies in homage to French's demise in Liverpool. The Moore's melody is "Sounds of Mirth in the Night-Air Ringing" set to the traditional air "The Priest in His Boots", and is also a reference to William Houston Collisson who died a week after French, who was an Anglican clergyman and who collaborated musically with French for over two decades, setting much of French's compositions to music. French is also the subject of the reference in Finnegans Wake "the troubadour who mangled Moore's melodies" because he parodied so many of them in The Jarvey and in The Irish Cyclist. A jarvey was the driver of a Jaunting car. Valentine Vousden wrote a famous song, "The Irish Jaunting Car" in celebration of Queen Victoria's visit to Ireland in the late 1850s where she took a ride on an Irish jaunting car in Killarney. Percy French wrote his own version of the song for his comic opera The Knight of the Road (1891). The hero of Finnegans Wake is also referred to as a Val Vousden.This opera is mentioned in Joyce's Ulysses too. French's first wife, Ettie Armitage Moore, was born in 1871, second daughter of William Armytage-Moore, brother of the Countess of Annesley (wife of the third Earl). Ettie (and their daughter) died in childbirth at the age of 20 and is buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin. Her sister, Priscilla Armitage-Moore, who became a famous society beauty, married her cousin and became the fifth Countess of Annesley. She lived at Castlewellan estate in County Down. Four years after Ettie's death, French married Helen Sheldon (Lennie) from Warwickshire, whom he met when she visited Dublin to sing in the chorus of his opera Strongbow. They had three daughters, Ettie (1894-1993) named after his first wife, Mollie, and Joan. French and his family moved