Belfast’s Nuala with the Hula, New York’s Lady Liberty and now Dublin’s Molly Malone. Honestly, although I come from a seafaring family, I don’t have a girl in every port.

Molly’s statue which dates from 1988 originally stood in Dublin’s Grafton Street before being relocated to Suffolk Street in 2014. She is an attraction for many tourists visiting Dublin, including those tracing their Irish ancestry and family history. Her buxom nature is purely incidental! As with many Dublin statues, she has a nickname: The Tart with the Cart.

The Molly Malone song tells a tale of a 17th century fishmonger and hawker who traded from a cart on the streets of Dublin.  One story suggests she plied a different trade by night!!  Poor Molly caught the fever and died prematurely. She is immortalised in the song of her name, sometimes referred to as “Cockles and Mussels” or In “In Dublin’s Fair City”.