Both Thornton and Gifford suspect an allusion to an Irish
song in Bloom's "my bold Larry" in Calypso, though
they offer different candidates. Thornton cites the ballad Bold
Traynor O, which seems to be echoed in Sirens.
Gifford remarks that "Larry is a faintly comic name to the
Dublin ear" and cites an example in the ballad The Night
Before Larry Was Stretched, which is performed in one
of the fantastic parodies in Cyclops.
Bold Traynor O seems to be performed seldom if at
all today, and it may have been obscure in Joyce's day also,
but Thornton cites an article by John Hand, "Street Songs and
Ballads and Anonymous Verse" in Irish Literature: Irish
Authors and Their Writings in Ten Volumes (1904),
3:3265-71, observing that it was one of several songs that
"had an immense run in their day" (3270). (Volume III in
Thornton's citation seems to be a mistake for VIII. And Hand
does not specify what Traynor's "day" may have
been.) I have not been able to locate any recordings or even
lyrics for this ballad, but its tune is apparently used in a
later song called The Flowers of Drogheda.
Thornton's claim is strongly supported by the fact that when
Boylan rounds the corner of O'Rourke's pub in Sirens Bloom's
phrase is varied to sound more like the title of the song: "By
Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O',
Boylan swayed and Boylan turned."
The Night Before Larry Was Stretched is much better
known today. Various traditional Irish groups have performed
and recorded this 18th century ballad, and Elvis Costello
recorded it in 1996 on Common Ground: Voices of Irish
Music. Although it is listed in Frank Harte's Songs
of Dublin, the melody is English and the lyrics draw
heavily on cant terms
that were as endemic to London as to Dublin. This execution
ballad is performed during the execution scene in Cyclops:
"Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin
streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The
Night before Larry was stretched in
their usual mirth-provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls
did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the
comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for
real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their
hardearned pennies."