Behind The Galleries:
Tales of the Unconnected
Blog post #20
21 October 2022
#20 Molly Malone
“Alive, alive o!”
This refrain was the fishmonger’s testament to the freshness of their stock in the seventeenth century.
But was Molly Malone, the heroine of the famous Irish song, ever a living person? Or was her very existence just a myth?
The song was originally published, not in Ireland, but in Boston, USA in 1876. Musicians and cultural academics have maintained that the song’s melody and tragicomic style are more suited to the Victorian era.
Indeed a version of the song was published in London in 1884 by James Yorkston.
To complicate matters further, in 2010 a mention of Molly Malone was found in a 1774 songbook called Apollo’s Medley.
She was described a fishmonger’s wife living in Howth, a small fishing village on the Northumbrian coast. longing for the comfort of a man to join her in her bed.
This gave rise to speculation that Molly was a fishmonger by day and a prostitute by night.
Jeanne Rynhart courted controversy with her depiction of Molly Malone in an extremely low-cut dress, but the Irish Times helpfully explained that ‘as women breastfed publicly in Molly’s time, breasts were popped out all over the place’.
As she plied her trade by day with the refrain “Alive, alive o!”, the fishmonger's testament to the freshness of their stock in the seventeenth century, this kind of apparel would not have been uncommon.
However, there have always been allusions to Molly's 'other profession' as a lady of the night. Hence the lurid names she was christened with.
