The original folk song Molly Malone / Cockles and Mussels doesn’t give us much biographic information about Molly. She’s born, she has parents, she has a job as a fishmonger, she dies of a fever.
So I added a little bit of a dating profile for her.
note: The second verse has a tricky meter, it’s worth just singing it out loud before you sing it out loud in a group!
Dating profile version by Cindy Tonkin 2019
Chorus:
Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,
singing cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.
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, singing
Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-oh
Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,
singing cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.
Her life was a caution-
Ary tale of emotion-
Al blackmail the kind that you’ve ne’er seen before
As she wheeled…
alive, alive oh…
She spoke Dutch and German
And tap danced in ermine
She lived in a terrace house all on her own
And she wheeled…
alive, alive oh…
Warm cognac she’d swallow
While in hot baths she’d wallow
She fiddled, she whistled, she played the trombone
As she wheeled…
alive, alive oh…
Sucked life to the marrow
Climbed Kilimanjaro
She sailed to the edge of the great wide unknown
And she wheeled..
Alive …
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, singing
Cockles and Mussels, alive, alive-oh
Alive alive oh, alive alive oh,
singing cockles and mussels, alive alive oh.
