Molly Malone may not be the model woman we imagined, judging by a lost version of her song, writes Maev Kennedy
THE DUBLIN WITS who dubbed the statue of Molly Malone "the tart with the cart" as soon as it appeared on Grafton Street may not have been far off the mark. A tiny 18th-century book has turned up in a Welsh bookshop containing the earliest known version of Sweet Molly Malone, almost a century older than the capital's unofficial anthem.
This one has no cockles, no mussels, no death of a fever and no barrow wheeled through streets broad and narrow. But the singer clearly knows sweet Molly very well indeed. It ends: “Och! I’ll roar and I’ll groan, / My sweet Molly Malone, / Till I’m bone of your bone, / And asleep in your bed.” The song also locates Molly “by the big hill of Howth”, plausibly enough for a fishmonger’s daughter.
The cockles-and-mussels version was first published in the US in 1883, attributed to James Yorkston. Other versions mentioning Howth are known, but none is from before the early 19th century. However, the little book just acquired by Anne Brichto, of Addyman Books in Hay-on-Wye, dates from about 1790 and suggests that the song is even older.
The frontispiece of Apollo's Medley, printed in Doncaster, boasts that it contains "the most popular and admired songs sung at the Theatre Royal and other public places of amusement". As she flicked through it, Brichto was amazed to find Molly Malone nestling seductively on page 78.
Touchingly, the singer worries that Molly may be lonely in her solitary bed: “Be poison, my drink, / If I sleep, snore, or wink, / Once forgetting to think, / Of your lying alone.” And his devotion is clearly beyond question:
“Och! It’s how I’m in love,
Like a beautiful dove,
That sits cooing above,
In the boughs of a tree;
It’s myself I’ll soon smother,
In something or other,
Unless I can bother,
Your heart to love me,
Sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone,
Sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone.”
Brichto bought it with other books from a local who occasionally sells books on behalf of her mother, but neither can recall where or how it was originally acquired.
The reputation of Molly Malone is worth millions in tourist euro. The kitschy statue by Jeanne Rynhart, showing Molly in an improbably grand scoop-necked gown with, as purists have pointed out, a handcart rather than a wheelbarrow, was installed at the foot of Grafton Street to celebrate Dublin’s millennium, in 1988.
Frank Magee, chief executive of Dublin Tourism, said this earlier song could be the source of vile speculation that Molly supplied shellfish by day and special services to students by night. “Everyone knows that it is hard to believe that such activities, if they took place in Dublin in the late 17th century, were of a mercenary nature. The author admits to having imbibed drink, which is another unusual characteristic for a Dubliner, and so I believe his recollection of his night with Molly may have been clouded by alcohol. There is no evidence to suggest that Molly was anything other than a lady of virtue who was smitten by the writer and may have shared her bed with him,” he says.
Brichto has removed the book from her online catalogue, hoping an Irish public collection may want to acquire it. She much prefers hers to the mawkishly fishy version. “If I had ever had a love poem written as honestly and prettily about me, I would have wanted it to be read hundreds of years on.”
Guardianservice
