Molly Malone
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Molly Malone or Cockles and Mussels is the unofficial anthem of Dublin City. It is also sung by supporters of the Irish international rugby team. Molly Malone is commemorated in a statue located at the bottom of Grafton Street in Dublin, which is known colloquially as "The Tart with the Cart". The statue portrays Molly in seventeenth-century dress and is claimed to represent a real person, but this is an urban legend as the subject of the song is probably fictional. 'Cockles and Mussels' as we know it was actually written by James Yorkston of Edinburgh in the late nineteenth century, and was undoubtedly influenced by earlier songs with a similar theme.
In Dublin's fair city,
where the girls are so pretty,
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive alive oh!"
"Alive-a-live-oh,
Alive-a-live-oh",
Crying "Cockles and mussels, alive alive oh".
Now she was a fishmonger,
And sure 'twas no wonder,
For so were her mother and father before,
And they each wheeled their barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!"
(chorus)
She died of a fever,
And no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.
Now her ghost wheels her barrow,
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh!"
(chorus)
External link
- Molly Malone (http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/irhismys/molly.htm)