Since devlinsfirst loved livvy

• Devlin first → Devlins first → devlinsfirst
  • A First-Draft version of Finnegans wake

• devlinsfirst loved livvy → devils (Watchers, angels, who had been sent down to instruct men), who seduced (first loved) livvy (daughters of men); the offspring of these sexual relations were Nephilims, giants, the "fallen ones" → Finn
  • Genesis 6:1–4: "1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown."[1]
  • Jubilees IV. 22 And he testified to the Watchers, who had sinned with the daughters of men; for these had begun to unite themselves, so as to be defiled, with the daughters of men, and Enoch testified against (them) all.[2]

• Devlin: Dublin, which is identified throughout FW with HCE, as the river Liffey is identified with his wife ALP

• Basque word for orange etymologised "the fruit which was first eaten" (McHugh) → the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden

• Devlin: Joseph Devlin, Irish politician; founder of the Ancient Order of Hibernians
  • Wikipedia

• Dyflin: (Old Norse) Norse name for Dublin

• Fürst: (German) prince → HCE → Morton Prince, author of The Dissociation of A Personality (New York, 1906), a study of a famous case of multiple personalities; this is a key work for FW, and Joyce's primary source for the psychology of dissociated personalities; all characters in FW have a tendency to split into two or more personalities, especially HCE's schizophrenic daughter Issy

• Devlin: Anne Devlin, Irishwoman, Robert Emmet's housekeeper; she was drawn into the events of Emmet's rising of 1803 → Anna Liffey, a nickname of the River Liffey from the Irish Abhainn Life → ALP
  • Wikipedia

• Devlin River: a tributary of the River Boyne
  • A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer

• Delvin River: a small river which forms part of the boundary between Dublin an Meath
  • A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer

• devlinsfirst: may have been corrupted in transmission from Joyce's devlins first (the new Danis Rose edition takes this view)

• Devils → possible reference to Protestants (as in opposition to Catholics)?
  • Third Census of Finnegans Wake