Offwall

• of the wall → of the offwall
  • A first-draft version of Finnegans wake

• awful

• offal: internal organs, entrails

• Abfall: (German) refuse, rubbish

• affald: (Danish) rubbish, scraps

• afval: (Dutch) rubbish

• off the wall: zany, irreverent

• Humpty Dumpty: eponymous character of the popular Mother Goose nursery rhyme: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall." → nursery rhymes are often told before bed, hence "retaled early in bed" → Humpty Dumpty has also been assumed to refer to King Richard III of England → see Humptyhillhead in the next line
  • Third Census of Finnegans Wake

• The Wall Street Crash → Wallstrait

Commentary

Humpty Dumpty: The egg (pre-birth), when sitting on the wall is in a kind of state of cosmic unity. The wall represents a boundary which by definition separates the world into duality (this side and that). Being at the position of the top of the wall therefore suggests a pre-dualistic existence (i.e. like Adam and Eve before their fall and the foetus before birth). Once the egg falls "offwall", it falls onto either this or that side – and nobody, not even all the king's horses and all the king's men, can figure out how to put it back together again (i.e. to achive cosmic unity).