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This remark is most certainly not from the 1960s, nor did it come from James Joyce. The poem "Finnigan to Flannagan" was written by Strickland Gillilan, an American "humourist" and published in Life magazine in 1897. It was written in a faux-Irish dialect and the final lines were: "Off again. On again. Gone again. Finnigan" The poem was extremely popular and the phrase became a common catchphrase which, over time, morphed into the quoted line (possibly because of the rhyme between "in again" and "Finnegan"), and which Ray Bradbury used in his novel Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury's novel was written in the 1950s and I, like another commenter here, was also a child in the 1950s and recall adults reciting this phrase as a mildly disapproving comment on kids running in and out of the house in play.

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diana.sandberg

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2y ago

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