Tooraloom
Tooraloom
In Brief
In two chapters of Ulysses Bloom recalls how Corny Kelleher is always singing a nonsensical ditty with a burden of "tooraloom, tooraloom." In Circe he sings the chorus himself. This is an actual music hall song, though Bloom (or Joyce) slightly misremembers the refrain, perhaps unconsciously echoing similar syllables in an Irish lullaby. The song was published in 1873 with the title I Vowed that I Never Would Leave Her, or Tootle Tum, Tootle Tum Tay. An earlier version was published in 1862.
Read More
In Lotus Eaters, when he first thinks of Kelleher,
Bloom recalls some lines from the song's second verse and the
nonsense syllables that conclude that verse:
Please look on this warrior bold,
Pray behold, I've been sold,
And I'm sure when my story is told
Badly treated I've been you will say
By a girl who was called Susan Jane,
Susan Jane was her name
But I hope I'll ne'er see her again.
(Chorus)
Tho' I vow'd that I never would leave her,
She turn'd out a cruel deceiver,
Tootle tum, tootle tum, Tootle tum, tootle tum,
Tootle tum, tootle tum tay.Now I met this girl first in the Park,
In the Park, What a lark,
And I ventur'd to make a remark
That it was a very cold day.
She answer'd me, not at all bold,
That it was very cold,
Her name and address she then told
Tootle tum, tootle tum tay.
(Chorus)
In Circe the entire Chorus floats back into his mind
when Nosey Flynn says, "Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old
sweet songs." Bloom sings the chorus "With rollicking
humour" and Hoppy Holohan
says, "Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him after all."
Paddy Leonard, however, opines, "Stage Irishman!" It
does seem that Bloom has made the song stereotypically Irish
by misremembering "Tootle tum" as "Tooraloom," thus echoing a
famous (and beautiful) lullaby:
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Hush now, don't you cry.
The music hall song itself, however, was anything but Irish.
Arthur Lloyd was born in Edinburgh to English parents. The
ArthurLloyd.co.uk website, source of the images posted here,
records that I Vowed that I Never Would
Leave Her was published in London in 1873. But
the page devoted to the song observes that it "was published
in a book of George Christy's songs at an earlier date, 1862,
with the name 'Bootle-Tum, Tootle-Tum Tay' so should be
attributed to him originally. The book was called George
Christy's Essence of Old Kentucky and contained many of
his songs." This book was published in New York.
Scottish-English and Scottish-American, then.
The first person to locate the source of Kelleher's song was
Aida Yared, creator of the JoyceImages.com website. She wrote
to the curator of the ArthurLloyd site, noting that "The
source of the song had thus far eluded Joyce scholars."
