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 a-live O!

This popular song is the unofficial anthem of Dublin and June 13th is Molly Malone Day. The song tells the story of a fishmonger plying her trade on the streets of Dublin but who died young of a fever. There is no evidence that the song is based on a real woman. She is sometimes portrayed as a hawker by day and a part-time prostitute by night.

Dubliners like to give nick names to statues, monuments etc. For example the statue of James Joyce I had in a post the other day is “the prick with a stick” and that of Oscar Wilde is “the fag on the crag”.

Molly Malone is nick named the “tart with a cart”.

We also came across a charming statue of two ordinary women who had been shopping, sitting on a bench resting. The nick name of this is “the hags with the bags”.