All of the events in James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses
Jefferson Airplane's Rejoyce
Kate Bush's The Sensual World
Also drawn from Molly Bloom's Soliloquy is Amber's song Yes!
The Florida band PopCanon recorded a song called Bloomsday for their 2000 album The Kingdom of Idiot Rock
Songs called "Bloomsday" are also available from Four Men and a Dog
Lou Reed's song My House
Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, alludes to Ulysses' main character in the song "Flickering Flame," found on Flickering Flame: The Solo Years, Vol. 1
Alan Munde has an instrumental called Molly Bloom
A song called Golden Hair
In 2008, Fire Records released Chamber Music: James Joyce
Van Morrison's song "Summertime in England," from the 1980 album Common One
Jimmy Buffett's If It All Falls Down
On the morbid side, we have James Joyce In Memoriam
Finally, Breathe
features a song called "Sneaking Up on Boo Radley," inspired by Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel 
. Set in a small Alabama town during the Depression, the story concerns a young girl named Scout, her older brother Jem, and their widowed father, attorney Atticus Finch. Hornsby's focus here is on the children's fascination with their mysterious, reclusive, and somewhat frightening neighbor, Boo Radley: They say he's crazy, they say he's gone/We play our tricks, make up funny songs/Sneaking around, feeling badly/Sneaking up on Boo Radley. The song depicts the kids creeping around the Radley house, trying to catch a gimpse of Boo, and conveys their mixed feelings about what they're doing: They say he's funny, got a loose screw/Stay away, he's a threat to you/Give him a break, what do we know/Might turn out we would like him so/We fear what we don't know. In the novel, Boo comes to the children's aid at a crucial moment. The lines Down the street, walking sadly/My little sister, loves him madly suggest the song is narrated by Jem. A live version of 
appears on Hornsby's 2000 album 
. [See our 
includes a long track--in excess of 10 minutes--called "The Highwayman," an adaptation of the narrative poem of the same name written by Alfred Noyes and published in 1906. Noyes's 
tells the romantic story of a dashing unnamed robber and Bess, the innkeeper's daughter who loves him. He comes to her one night on horseback and promises to return to her once he's achieved his goal: One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night/But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light. Unfortunately, "King George's men" have other ideas, and use Bess to bait a trap for the highwayman. She gives her life to warn him away, but the highwayman is ultimately killed as well: They shot him down on the highway/Down like a dog on the highway/And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat. The song essentially sets the poem to music, though some abridgement was required--McKennitt has omitted three stanzas, in the process excising a minor subplot about a jealous stable boy who betrays the couple to the authorities.
features songs based on the writings of both authors (for the Rand reference, see our previous post about 
refers to the home of the Elves in Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle Earth. Rivendell features in both 
and 
, most notably as the site of the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring. The song captures the sense of peace and serenity that visitors to Rivendell always feel, and travelers long to return to: Elven songs and endless nights/Sweet wine and soft relaxing lights/Time will never touch you/Here in this enchanted place. It is also identified as A place you can escape the world/Where the Dark Lord cannot go--a reference to Tolkien's übervillain, Sauron. Tolkien's writings are also said to have influenced another Rush song, The Necromancer, though the references are less direct.
, the last album they recorded together as a band. Abbey Road was released in 1969, but the lyrics to "Golden Slumbers" date back somewhat earlier--in fact, about 370 years earlier. The song is adapted from a poem by Thomas Dekker, an Elizabethan dramatist, and comes from a play Dekker wrote with Henry Chettle and William Haughton called The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill, first performed in the 1590s and published in 1603 (it is currently available in 
). The original poem reads: 
never appeared on a Steely Dan studio album, but they have performed it live and it can be found on a number of compilations of outtake and demos by the duo, including 
, released in 2007. The lyrics come virtually verbatim from Chapter X of Lewis Carroll's 1865 fantasy 
, and begin: "Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail"--whiting being a type of fish related to the cod. In the book, they are sung by the Mock Turtle as he and the Gryphon demonstrate for Alice a bizarre dance called the Lobster-Quadrille. (This is normally performed with actual lobsters, but the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon make do.) Fortunately Carroll records Alice's reaction to the performance: "'Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch,' said Alice, feeling very glad that it was over at last: 'And I do like that curious song about the whiting!'" (This same passage from Alice provided the title for actress Lilli Palmer's 1975 memoir, Change Lobsters and Dance.)
