Wallstrait

• Wall Street, New York → supposedly built by Irish navvies (like Tim Finnegan)

• The Wall Street Crash or Black Thursday refers to 24 October 1929, the day when the New York Stock Exchange crashed, leading eventually to the Great Depression. The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, and which had led millions of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market.

• well-straight: looks like a calque of a Romance language. Cf. Greek orthodox

• straight as a wall: plumb, i.e., "straight (down) as a well (shaft)". Cf. Eve and Adam's. Possibly a fall down a well-straight, i.e., without any sort of swerve, implies that Finnegan (who is falling) has no free will, according to Epicurean doctrine.

• nr "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall..."

• strait: difficulty, crisis; narrow sea-passage

• The first line of the song "Finnegan's Wake": Tim Finnegan lived on Walkin Street...