Tag Archives: Molly Malone

Dublin Highlights

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I was born and grew up in Dublin. I spend a lot of time travelling through Dublin and its environs. I live nearby, in the town of Bray just 20km down the coast. I have regularly posted on my Dublin adventures. Of late, I have noted some good posts from overseas travellers and locals alike (World in Your Eyes and Finding Your Feet). So I thought I might join in and post a few Dublin memories. Something of a greatest hits perhaps, or top ten tips type of thing.

5 Top Sights

The Liffey

Christchurch Cathedral

St Stephen’s Green

Phoenix Park

Grand Canal Docks

Dublin is a great city to walk round. Literally. My series Dublin’s Circular Roads describes a particular route. Another circle is provided by the two canals, the Royal to the North and the Grand on the south. Within their radius the city centre is divided into north and south sides by the River Liffey. It is the river that makes the city. Each bank is lined with quaysides from the estuary in Dublin Bay upriver to the western rail terminus, Heuston Station. The main buildngs to see are the Custom House and the Four Courts, both by Gandon and on the North Quays. The Ha’penny Bridge, a cast iron pedestran bridge spanning the river between Liffey St and Temple Bar is one of Dublin’s most iconic sights.

Christchurch is the more ancient of Dublin’s two cathedral’s. King Sitric Silkenbeard, overtaken with piety in his later years, established it in 1028. The Synod House to the west is joined to the Cathedral by an arched brdge, making it look like the main road passes through the ancient church. Wonderful.

Dublin can be heaven

With coffee at eleven

And a stroll in Stephen’s Green

(Dublin Saunter by Leo Maguire and sung by Noel Pucell)

St Stephen’s Green waits at the top of Grafton Street. In the seventeenth century it was a commonage on the outskirts of the city. It was walled in 1664 with access restricted to owners of adjacent properties until 1877 when Sir A E Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, put the park into public ownership. Entering through Fusiliers’ Arch, pathways flow around the ornamental lake. Young Dubliners and visitors lounge on the grass, taking time out from the big smoke. Meanwhile, on the western end of the city (just past Heuston) the Phoenix Park is a vast walled park housing the Zoo, the President and a herd of deer. 

The Grand Canal inscribes a sublime arc around Dublin’s south inner cty. It reaches the estuary at Grand Canal Docks where the modern highrise of Google Docks clashes appropriately with nineteenth century docklands. This area provides a fitting finale for my Dublin’s Circular Roads series.

5 Top Visits

Dublin Castle

Trinity College

National Gallery

Hugh Lane Gallery

Guinness Hopstore

Dublin Castle stands on the spot where Dublin began. In the ninth century Viking raiders landed at the confluence of the Liffey with its tributary the Poddle. On the shore of this dark pool they established the Danish settlement, taking its name from the Gaelic for the pool: Dubh Linn. The Norman invasion three centuries later led to the building of Dublin Castle by order of King John in 1202. For eight hundred years it was the centre of foreign power. After Independence the Castle was used for state occasions and became a major tourist attraction. There’s a garden on the site of the old Dubh Linn, near the Chester Beatty Library which holds a priceless treasure of Oriental manuscripts, art and artifacts.

Trinity College campus is an oasis in the swirling centre of the city. Founded in the reign of Elzabeth at the end of the 16th Century it has become one of the most prestigous colleges in the Enlish speaking world. It houses the Book of Kells and its Library by right holds every book published in Ireland and Britain. 

The National Gallery is one of a quartet of public buildings flanking Leinster House, Ireland’s Dail (Parliament). The National Museum and Library face Kildare St, while the Gallery and the Natural History Museum (or Dead Zoo) face Merrion Square. The Gallery came from the Great Exhibition of 1847 on Leinster Lawns, proposed by Railway developer, William Dargan. The collection features the best of Irish art including Lavery, Yeats, Burton, Orpen, and international greats including Vermeer, Turner, Caravaggio and Monet. An extensive portrait gallery features contemporary and period art. 

The Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square was founded as Dublin’s Metropolitan Gallery. It is named for Hugh Lane, a young collector who amassed a fine collection of Impressionst art. He died on the Lustania in 1915, not quite forty.

Arthur Guinness established his brewery in 1759. The clocks of Dublin have been stuck at a minute to six ever since. In our heads, at least. The St. James’s Gate Brewery lies in the Liberties to the southwest of the city. A visit to the Hopstore will give you the full story, followed by a creamy pint in the elevated splendour of the tenth story Gravity Bar.

Or, you could go to one of Dublin’s many pubs.

5 Top Pubs

Dublin is packed with great pubs. There is no definitive syle, they come in all shapes and sizes. The Victorian and late Edwardian are perhaps most typical. Many’s the blog and pubication that has given the top ten or twenty. It all depends. For what it’s worth, my favourite five are:

1. O’Donoghue’s of Merrion Row, 2. Toner’s of Baggot Street, 3. The Palace in Fleet Street, 4. Grogan’s Castle Inn on Sth William St, 5. The Stag’s Head at Dame Court.

That’s maybe enough for one pub crawl, but there are many more. James Joyce’s Ulysses posed the riddle of the impossibility of crossing Dublin without passing a pub. It is easily solved, of course. Don’t pass any, just go in. If indeed you do pass the Stag’s Head, and you shouldn’t, it’s near enough the definitive old style Dublin pub. 

With all that drink, the only people to remain upstanding in Dubln are its statues. Dublin’s statues immortalise figures from fact and fiction

5 Top Statues

1. Molly Malone on Suffolk Street, 2. Phiil Lynott on Harry Street, 3. Oscar Wlde at Merrion Square, 4. James Joyce, 5. Patrick Kavanagh.

The statue of Molly Malone by Jeanne Rynhart dates from Dublin’s millennium celebrations in 1988. Molly steps from the air of a song to become flesh, or bronze at least.

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!

The song is of obscure provenance. A music-hall ballad of the 1880s it was attributed to Scottish songsmith, James Yorkston. It has become the anthem for the capital city. She can certainly wheel her wheelbarrow. First time I saw it ‘twas at the bottom of Grafton Street, now it stands outside Saint Andrew’s Church on Suffolk Street.

Molly was a seventeenth century barrowgirl who earned a bit on the side plying the oldest profession. The song certainly alludes to sex. Cockles and mussels has salacious connotations. Young lovers and visitors to the Fair City have taken the photo opportunity the statue offers. It is traditional to fondle one or both of Molly’s breasts, giving them a sunburst emphasis.

At Bruxelles Pub near the top of Grafton Street, another lifesize statue vies with Molly for popularity. Phil Lynott was black and Irish as Guinness and leader of Thin Lizzy, kings of the Dublin Rock scene. They took a rocked up version of Irish trad balled, Whiskey in the Jar, to the British charts. The ballad records the misadventures of a seventeenth century highwayman whose lover in Lynott’s version is called Molly. So no accident that they’re still close. 

But me I like sleeping

Especially in my Molly’s chamber

But here I am in prison

Here I am with a ball and chain.

(Whiskey in the Jar)

Lynott died in 1985, aged just thirty six. The video for his solo hit, Old Town, features him swanning about Grafton Street, Ringsend and the Long Hall pub on George’s Street.

Oscar Wilde reclines sedately at the northwestern corner of Merrion Square. James Joyce saunters down North Earl Street across from the GPO. Another writer, poet Patrick Kavanagh, reclines on a bench on the Grand Canal at Baggot Street Bridge.

On Pembroke Road look out for my ghost

Dishevelled with shoes untied

Playing through the railings with little children

Whose children have long since died

Early Modern Dublin

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Stephens green

Dublin can be heaven

With coffee at eleven

And a stroll in Stephen’s Green

By the seventeenth century Dublin was spreading beyond its walls. The Liberties were established to the south and west. Settlements sprang up on the north bank of the Liffey. At the end of a tumultuous century, the Liffey was lined by redbrick gable-fronted houses and the quaysides had been constructed as thoroughfares. The trend was for enlargement to the east, which became the prosperous part of the city. Between the crumbling medieval Old Town and Georgian Dublin of the mid eighteenth century, the winding streets and lanes of today’s social and commercial heart developed.

Dame Street is one of the defining thoroughfares of the city, from City Hall to Trinity College and the old Parliament Buildings. Temple Bar lies to the north, to the south lies the shopping, strolling, cafe Capital centered on Grafton Street. Dame Street is the main street of banking and commerce, its palaces of commerce capturing the exuberance of the Belle Epoque, imposing facades topped with picturesque turrets. Recently, expanding city nightlife has colonised some of these premises for drinking and dining pleasure, old trades living on in such names as the Mercantile. Running parallel, Dame Lane stretches from the Castle’s Lower Yard, across South Great George’s Street, through Dame Court and past the Stag’s Head, eventually emerging into city traffic by Trinity Street.. If indeed you do pass the Stag’s Head, and you shouldn’t, it’s near enough the definitive old style Dublin pub.

Suffolk

St Andrew’s Church is Dublin’s tourist HQ and as good a reference point for the city centre as you’re likely to get. Setting up stall outside is a bronzed woman with fetching cleavage. The statue of Molly Malone by Jeanne Rynhart dates from Dublin’s millennium celebrations in 1988. In just a quarter of a century it has achieved iconic status. Molly steps from the air of a song to become flesh, or bronze at least.

Molly

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!

The song is of obscure provenance. First recorded as a music-hall ballad of the 1880s, attributed to Scottish songsmith, James Yorkston, though it may be derived from an older ballad. It has become the anthem for the capital city; the refrain Alive, alive oh! being suitably valedictory. However the song, as is the case with many an Irish song, finishes on a mournful note.

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!

In old Dublinese, fever and save her would rhyme. She can still wheel her wheelbarrow, all the same. Last time I saw it ‘twas at the bottom of Grafton Street, now it stands outside Saint Andrew’s Church. Mythology has accreted to the song. The story goes that Molly was a seventeenth century barrowgirl who earned a bit on the side plying the oldest profession. The song certainly alludes to sex. Cockles and mussels (or muscles) has salacious connotations. The refrain has a bawdy singalong quality. Young lovers and visitors to the Fair City have taken the photo opportunity the statue offers. It is traditional to grasp one or both of Molly’s breasts, giving them a sunburst emphasis, fulfilling the myth’s premise.

Top o' Grafton Street

Top o’ Grafton Street

A few yards further east, Grafton Street runs at a right angle to Suffolk Street. Now Dublin’s principal shopping street, a bustling pedestrianised way thronged with shoppers and tourists, lined with buskers and street theatre.

Grafton Street’s a wonderland, there’s magic in the air.

There’s diamonds in the lady’s eyes

And gold dust in her hair.

East of this line is where Enlightenment Dublin begins, with a rationalist street plan and regular, symmetrical facades. To the left you’ll notice the streets, still narrow, offer straight vistas. Anne Street towards St Ann’s Church, dating to 1707, is a fine example. To the right narrow alleys like Johnson’s Court tunnel back to the medieval. The Court provides a rear entrance to Clarendon Street Church, an oasis of spiritual calm.

At Bruxelles Pub near the top of Grafton Street, another lifesize statue vies with Molly for popularity. Phil Lynott was black and Irish as Guinness, leader of Thin Lizzy, kings of the Dublin Rock scene of the early seventies. Lynott took a rocked up version of Irish trad balled, Whiskey in the Jar to the British charts. The ballad records the misadventures of a seventeenth century highwayman. The protagonist’s lover, or whore, in Lynott’s version is called Molly, so no accident that they’re still close.

Lynott

But me I like sleeping

Especially in my Molly’s chamber

But here I am in prison

Here I am with a ball and chain.

Lynott died in 1985, aged just thirty six. The video for his song, Old Town, features him swanning about Grafton Street, a tradition he’d maintained since the late sixties. Captain America’s near the top of the street would have known him and holds some of his and other Rock memorabilia. Captain A’s featured artworks after Lichtenstein by Jim Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick, famed for his depictions of Celtic myth and Che Guevara, recasts Captain America as a crusader against fascism. We came for their Mexican burgers and red wine. It was the hip hangout of the early seventies. Lizzy’s traveling coterie, Horslips, Mellow Candle and Chris De Burgh hung out here. De Burgh was resident singer, resplendent in star spangled suit. Probably helped to clear the joint.

Nearby, the Dandelion Market developed into Dublin’s hippy flea market. U2 cut their teeth here, before the whole thing was subsumed in the frothy Stephen’s Green Centre. At the top of Grafton Street, we emerge blinking into daylight dappled by trees. Saint Stephen’s Green in the seventeenth century was a commonage on the outskirts of the city. Those granted the title Freeman of the City, still maintain their right to graze their sheep on the Green. As Bono recently insisted.

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The Green was walled in 1664 with access restricted to owners of adjacent properties. The surrounding houses would have been gable fronted properties, known as Dutch Billys. This style gave way to Georgian by the middle of the eighteenth century. Vestiges of the earlier style can be discerned. Look above street level and you will see, here and there, an asymmetrical window layout on the upper storeys, indicating where a gable frontage once was. The Green was restricted to residents until 1877 when Sir A E Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, campaigned to put the park into public ownership. The park was newly laid out to the design of William Shephard, Lord Ardilaun contributing the extensive planting of exotic trees and shrubs.

Entering through Fusiliers’ Arch, pathways flow around the ornamental lake. Young Dubliners and visitors occupy the grass, taking time out from the commercial hustle of Grafton Street. If Dublin can be heaven, and this is heaven’s heath. Beyond the park’s southern extent, the centre city starts to ebb. The rational expanse of Georgian Dublin takes over with its wide regular streets. Find a quiet elevated spot past the kip of the serenes, by Moore’s statue of WB Yeats. It looks nothing like the man! Slip into a boulevardier dream, slide back into another time.

Toora loora loora laddy, toora loora lay,

I know the Dublin pavements will be boulders on my grave.

Green pond