Stephen thinks of Vikings invading Ireland "when Malachi wore the collar of gold." The phrase perhaps floats into his memory with a tune attached, because it comes from the song "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old" which poet Thomas Moore published in the first volume of his Irish Melodies (1808). This allusion in Proteus is the first of the novel's many, many echoes of verses by Ireland's beloved nationalist songwiter.

Moore set "Let Erin Remember the Days of Old" to a traditional tune called "The Red Fox." It evokes the days of Irish kings before the coming of the Anglo-Normans:

Let Erin remember the days of old
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold
Which he won from the proud invader;
When her kings, with standard of green unfurled,
Led the Red Branch Knights to danger
Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.

On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays,
When the clear cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining:
Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time,
For the long-faded glories they cover.

Malachi, or Máel Sechnaill (948-1022), was the High King of Ireland at the end of the 10th century. For many years he fought to expel the Norsemen centered in Dublin, sometimes in concert with his rival Brian Boru (Brian Boroimhe). In his notes to the song Moore quotes from Ferdinando Warner's History of Ireland (1763): "This brought on an encounter between Malachi (the Monarch of Ireland in the tenth century) and the Danes, in which Malachi defeated two of their champions, whom he encountered successively, hand to hand, taking a collar of gold from the neck of one, and carrying off the sword of the other, as trophies of his victory" (vol. 1, book 9).

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