Hundreds of Irish pubs worldwide are called Molly Malone's. But let's make one thing clear: there's no such thing as an Irish pub outside of Ireland.

Imagine the disappointment I felt on my first visit to Dubai only to find the bar right next to the beautiful hotel I was staying in was called Molly Malone's. At least I could sink a cold beer in there, but it felt like Woking during a heatwave.

There are lots of pubs with an Irish name, painted green and with the Guinness logo prominently displayed, but that doesn't make them Irish; they are just pubs with an Irish theme. The only Irish pubs are in Ireland. However, I digress.

Who was Molly Malone and why is her name so popular as a choice of (Irish) pub name? 'The Ballad of Molly Malone' is one of the best-known songs in Ireland and the unofficial anthem of the Irish capital, Dublin. While it's not known when the song was originally written, it was first published in 1883 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the song Molly is portrayed as the pretty young daughter of a Dublin fishmonger who used to wheel her father's market barrow up and down Grafton Street, calling out 'Cockles and mussels' to advertise her wares.


In Dublin's fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone.
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, 'Cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh!'

She was a fishmonger
And sure 'twas no wonder
For so were her father and mother before.
And they each wheeled their barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, 'Cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh!'

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!'


One school of thought suggests that Molly was a prostitute by night, while another argues she was the only lady street hawker of the time who wasn't. 'Cockles and mussels' was a common fishmonger's cry of the time, but as it was also used as slang for the female private parts, Molly could have been selling her own 'wares' at the same time. Women involved in the fish trade were notorious for their loose morals and foul mouths - hence the expression 'swearing like a fishwife' and London's famous fish market, Billingsgate, becoming a byword for crude and vulgar language. The fever that Molly dies from is deliberately unspecified; it could have easily been some kind of sexually transmitted disease. But you can choose for yourselves which version you want to believe.

It is suggested that Molly was a real woman who lived some time in the seventeenth century, but there is no evidence for this. Molly was a common nickname for Mary or Margaret (see also THE MOLLY PITCHER). And while many Molly Malones would have been born in Dublin over the centuries, there is nothing to connect any of them with the events in the song. Nevertheless, in 1988 the Dublin Millennium Commission endorsed claims concerning a Molly Malone who died on 13 June 1699, and proclaimed 13 June to be Molly Malone Day.

A year earlier, in 1987, a statue of Molly was unveiled at the top end of Grafton Street, to mark the city's millennium, portraying her as a beautiful young lady wearing an extremely low-cut seventeenth-century gown. This was justified by city officials on the grounds of breastfeeding in public being common in Dublin during Molly's day: 'breasts popped out all over the place'. The now famous statue is known locally as the 'trollop with the scallops', the 'dish with the fish', or the 'tart with the cart', and Molly has become something of a tourist attraction over the years - one of the most photographed in the entire city. Now, why doesn't that surprise me?