One sovereign punned to petery pence

• one sovereign pound to every penny → every word in FW is equal to 240 words in an "ordinary" book?

• sovereign: from 1817-1914, a pound coin in “old money”

• sovereign: royal → Really?

• pound: the former unit of currency in Ireland; in "old money" (i.e. before 1971, when decimalisation was introduced), one pound (£1) was equivalent to 240 pence (240d). In Ireland "pound" was often Gaelicized to "punt."

• punned: (1) made a pun; (2) pounded, beat

• Peter’s Pence: (1) an annual tax or tribute of a silver penny from each householder having land of a certain value, paid before the Reformation to the Papal See at Rome; (2) any donation to the Catholic Church

• Peter: St Peter, the apostle and first Bishop of Rome; in FW Saints Peter and Paul are often paired as Shem and Shaun characters; in the first draft of this sentence, Joyce wrote: A sovereign punned to paltry pence, making the allusion to St Paul (paltry) explicit
  • Third Census of Finnegans Wake
  • A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake