‘Twas New Year’s morning I first saw, or rather heard, Molly Malone. My head was splitting after a raucous evening before, celebrated with some of my friends at a pub not far from Trinity College, where we studied together. Anyhow, this voice shouting “cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o” woke me from a restless sleep. My mouth was dry, and the voice, while loud, was not unpleasant.
“Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o” rang out again. Thinking some steamed mussels might go well with dinner, I pulled on some clothes, grabbed my purse, and walked down the stairs to the door. I stepped outside and nearly got sick. My head was still swimming from the night before, and Dublin did not smell too pretty that New Year’s morning. The gutters were full, and the smell of fish when I walked up to the wooden cart she was pushing nearly set me off, too.
Molly was a few years younger than I, perhaps 16 or so. She was very pretty despite her rough clothes, but her hands were rough and chapped from gathering her wares and trundling the cart around town. I bought three dozen mussels, paid her a few pence, and waited expectantly for her to wrap them. She looked at me quizzically and finally laughed, “You hain’t got nothing to carry ‘em?” she asked. I blushed, realizing that a poor fishmonger would not have paper or string for such a thing.
“Wait here,” I stammered, and ran back to see what I could find. Cook was in the kitchen, and she gave me a pot when I told her what it was for. “Some more mussels and a few dozen cockles would go well if you can add them, sir, she said. I could use the ones not steamed in a fish stew.” I agreed and rushed back to Molly, who was still calling “cockles and mussels alive, alive-o” every minute or so.
For about a shilling more, I filled the pot (a good-sized one) with perhaps an eighth of what she had on her cart. She smiled and was very grateful. I expect she didn’t get many shillings in a day. I rarely spent that much a day, for that matter.
I asked her name, and she replied, “Molly Malone, if you please m’lord.”
I laughed and told her I was just a student at Trinity and no one close to any title. “Come this way more often, Molly Malone,” I said. “I cannot buy like this often, but fresh fish and a fair face make the day more pleasant. She did a slight, clumsy attempted curtsey, blushed, and pushed off down the street. “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o,” rang out as she turned the corner. The pot was heavy as I picked it up to bring in. She must be a strong girl, pushing a cart like that.
Cook looked at the pot full of shellfish and grinned. “She is a pretty one, is she not?” I blushed. She put one of her helpers to sort the fish for various uses, including soups and chowders for several days.
There would be no classes for a day or two more, so we enjoyed ourselves, my friends and I, walking in Dublin and enjoying the clear day, though it was cold enough we didn’t stay out that long. I thought of Molly in her threadbare clothing and cheap brogans, and I imagined she must be freezing before the day was done.
Supper was excellent. In addition to the usual beef, we had some mussels, fish stew, anchovies, and squab. I tore off some bread to wipe my plate. The wine bottles were empty, but we had brandy and cheese to enjoy after the mince pie.
“You outdid yourself, Cook,” I said as she brought out the mince pie and a spotted pudding. “I trust you saved enough to enjoy yourself.”
“Always, Sir Thomas,” she said, patting her ample girth.
“Sir Thomas?” mocked my friend Padraigh, “Putting on airs again, eh?”
“No, but he paid the pretty fishmonger well for her wares, probably seemed like a lord to her,” teased Cook. She curtsied and said, “Now, M’Lords, enjoy your evening,” and returned to the kitchen.
I blushed again. The others laughed.
I saw ‘my Molly’ from time to time after that, but mostly at a distance. Sometimes a boy, her younger brother Og, I was to learn, was with her. I talked to her again one morning after Easter, and gathered some more from her cart. It seems her mother and father were fishmongers as well. From day to day, young Og would help gather, then tag along with one parent, or Molly.
Their harmony was exquisite. Molly would cry “Alive, alive-o”, and Og would come in an octave above, “cockles, and mussels, alive, alive-o”.
One day, when Og was with a parent, I asked her where she went to Mass. Next Sunday, I arranged to be at that church, where I could see her a few pews away, Og by her side. Rough peasants, apparently her parents, sat next to them and appeared to follow the sermon attentively. If their appearance was any indication, Molly was in for a hard life. Her mother had probably been attractive once, but rough chapped hands and enlarged knuckles attested to the work of gathering and selling her wares. Both adults, likely little more than 30, were aged a decade beyond, faces burnt by sun and wind and cold for years, lined and worn.
This could go nowhere. My classmates teased me, but they and I knew that, low as my station was, I could have no truck with a fishmonger unless she were a trollop. On a few meetings, when I bought more fish, I suggested a visit, but Molly told me she was promised to the Lord. I may have thought myself in love, but she was betrothed to another.
Around 1689. James’s soldiers occupied the college, and I had to leave, rejoining my family a few counties away. Small landowners they might be, but true Irish, and they determined I should be a scholar or a priest. Meanwhile, I tended sheep and shovelled manure. I would much rather be a scholar or priest than shovel manure all my life. Younger brother Seamus, though, loved the farm life and would be an aid to my Da and Ma in their ould age.
A few years passed, Trinity resumed courses, but as a more distinctly Protestant entity. However, it was the only such school in Ireland, and my parents (and I) desired I should resume and pursue the law, such as it was under the English king. Many of the churches were closed.
The college was barely functioning again. I found some teachers and located my old lodgings, with little use for wear. Cook, however, appeared to have aged many years. “With no young men at school and the sojers so tight, it was a difficult time. Then the grippe a winter ago took so much,” she told me. “I lost me man Finn, an’ many others did so, too.”
I settled into classes. Latin declensions, logic, history, all went my way. The cobbled road near our inn was quiet, no calls of flowers, or strawberries, or cockles as the seasons passed. When Lent came, we endured the fast.
“Are there no fishmongers these days?” I asked Cook one Friday afternoon.
“A few, but the grippe las’ winter claimed many. Dear Molly Malone an’ her brother were among them, I heard, as well as me man Finn.” She wept.
I thought my heart would stop with that news, but, alas it continued apace. There were no steamed mussels at Easterdinner.
My studies went on. I graduated Trinity, stayed to teach, unmarried as required, and so I am approaching middle age. Cook has long passed, and I live in another set of quarters more fitting for a master than a student. Still, some mornings, I seem to see a faint image of a figure with a cart and hear my Molly crying, “cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o”.