"The Minstrel Boy" is an Irish song written by Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) and published as part of his Irish Melodies. Moore himself came to be nicknamed "The Minstrel Boy", and indeed it is the title of Leonard Strong's 1937 biography of Moore.

Thomas Moore, also known as Tom Moore, was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his Irish Melodies. His setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish to English. Politically, Moore was recognised in England as a press, or "squib", writer for the aristocratic Whigs; in Ireland he was accounted a Catholic patriot.