What is The Croppy Boy in Ulysses?
“The Croppy Boy” is an Irish ballad about a young rebel of 1798 who goes to confession, only to find the priest is a British officer in disguise who has him hanged. Ben Dollard sings it in the Ormond bar in Episode 11, and the bar is moved to silence.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 11, Sirens. Tom Kernan, calling for the song in the Ormond.
The Croppy Boy. Our native Doric.
What it means in plain English
Bloom, in the dining room, hears the song as he leaves, and thinks of the boy who has no son to carry on his name, like Bloom himself.
“Doric” here means plain native speech.
Literary context
“Croppies” were rebels who cut their hair short in sympathy with the French Revolution.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 6 and 11
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Who sings it?
Ben Dollard, a bass singer.
Related terms
Ormond Hotel
The Ormond Hotel on Ormond Quay is the setting of Episode 11, “Sirens”. Bloom eats liver and bacon in the dining room while Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard sing in the bar, and Boylan leaves to visit Molly.
“Bronze by gold”
“Bronze by gold” refers to the two barmaids of the Ormond Hotel, the bronze-haired Miss Douce and the golden-haired Miss Kennedy. The phrase opens Episode 11, “Sirens”, the musical episode, where Joyce writes prose as if it were a piece of music.
Rudy Bloom
Rudy Bloom is Leopold and Molly's son, who died at eleven days old, eleven years before the novel. Bloom thinks of him throughout 16 June, and his ghost appears at the end of Circe as an eleven-year-old boy reading a book.