Mountjoy Prison enters the book as the threatened destination in “The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly,” a public song that turns HCE’s fall from authority into a comic image of punishment and confinement. The prison is not described as a setting in which events unfold; its force lies in the ballad’s imagined sentence, which gives the scandal a civic and penal consequence.

The Ballad’s Sentence

The song first recalls HCE as a fallen figure, once “King of the Castle” and now treated “like a rotten old parsnip.” It then converts that reversal into a specific threat: he is to be sent from Green Street to Mountjoy Prison by order of “His Worship.” The movement from remembered status to an official-sounding punishment makes the prison the endpoint of the ballad’s humiliation.

Public Shame and Confinement

The chorus repeats the destination, making Mountjoy Prison a refrain rather than a passing place-name. The repeated announcement invites collective participation in HCE’s disgrace: the crowd’s song rehearses his removal from public life and recasts confinement as part of the spectacle. The passage presents a threat in the form of satirical performance, not a report that HCE is actually arrested or imprisoned.

Narrative Significance

Mountjoy Prison gives the ballad’s mock-legal language a concrete Dublin destination. Set against the song’s extravagant claims about HCE’s schemes and reforms, the penal institution sharpens the contrast between his former prominence and his degraded public image. Its appearance therefore marks the imagined consequence of scandal while leaving the actual outcome unresolved.