Phoenish

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  • Phoenix: the bennu, a mythical Egyptian bird that rises from its own ashes → ties in with the theme of life and sleep cycles, and resurrection and waking
  • Phoenix Tavern: 18th Century public house on the site of the present Mullingar House (in which FW, for the most part, is set)
  • Phoenicians: ancient Semitic-speaking people; Carthage was a Phoenician city that was utterly destroyed by Rome in the Third Punic War (148-146 B.C.); the Romans so detested the Phoenicians that they spread salt over the fields so that nothing would ever grow there again → an eighteenth-century theory held that the Irish were of Carthaginian origin!
  • phoinos (φοινος): (Greek) bloody; blood-red; blood-thirsty → red end of the rainbow → Rot (FW 003.12) and rory (FW 003.13)
  • phoinix (φοινιξ): (Greek) phoenix; purple-red, crimson
  • phoenish → furnace
  • finish