What does “Cuckoo” mean in Ulysses?
“Cuckoo” is the cry of the cuckoo clock that ends Bloom's part of Episode 13. The cuckoo lays eggs in other birds' nests, and the word gives us “cuckold”, a man whose wife is unfaithful. The clock calls it out to Bloom, whose wife has just been with Blazes Boylan.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Several episodes. The clock in the priest's house near Sandymount Strand, as Bloom dozes off.
Cuckoo Cuckoo Cuckoo.
What it means in plain English
Gerty MacDowell hears it too and realises Bloom is a cuckold. The cry repeats, line after line, to close the episode.
In Scylla and Charybdis, Mulligan clucks “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” when Stephen talks about Othello and jealousy.
Literary context
Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost has a song in which the cuckoo “mocks married men”.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 9, 13 and 15
- William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act 5
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Does the cuckoo return?
Yes. In Circe a timepiece calls “Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo.” as Bloom imagines Boylan and Molly.
Related terms
Blazes Boylan
Hugh “Blazes” Boylan is a flashy Dublin concert manager who is organising Molly Bloom's singing tour, and who becomes her lover at 4 pm on 16 June 1904. Bloom knows the meeting is coming and spends the day trying not to think about it.
Gerty MacDowell
Gerty MacDowell is the young woman Bloom watches on Sandymount Strand at sunset in Episode 13. The first half of the episode is told in the gushing style of the romantic magazines she reads. She leans back to show her legs; Bloom masturbates; then she limps away.
I AM A
Bloom writes “I. AM. A.” with his stick in the sand of Sandymount Strand at the end of Episode 13, then stops: there is no room. The unfinished message to Gerty MacDowell has never been completed, and readers have offered many endings for it.