The lyrics of the popular Dublin song published in the 18th century tell a different story.

The wit who dubbed the statue of Molly Malone in Dublin’s city centre “the tart with the cart” may not have been far off the mark.

A tiny 18th-century book has turned up in Hay-on-Wye containing the earliest known version of Sweet Molly Malone, almost a century older than Dublin’s unofficial anthem.

Unlike the famous verses bawled at sporting fixtures and stag nights, and in Irish-themed bars across the world named in her honour, this has no cockles, no mussels, no death of a fever, and no barrow wheeled through streets broad and narrow.

According to an article in the Guardian newspaper, the chorus in the older version read:

“Och! It’s how I’m in love,

Like a beautiful dove,

That sits cooing above,

In the boughs of a tree;

It’s myself I’ll soon smother,

In something or other,

Unless I can bother,

Your heart to love me,

Sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone,

Sweet Molly, sweet Molly Malone.”

This is a similar chorus to the song Sweet Molly Molone published in the pocket Encyclopedia of Scottish, English and Irish Songs, published in 1816 and reproduced on the Mudcat Forum by Jim Dixon in 2008:

MOLLY MALONE.

BY the big hill of Howth!
That’s a bit of an oath,
That to swear by I’m loath,
To the heart of a stone;
But be poison my drink,
If I sleep, snore, or wink,
Once forgetting to think,
Of your lying alone.

CHORUS: Och! it’s how I’m in love
Like a beautiful dove,
That sits cooing above,
In the boughs of a tree;
For myself I’ll soon smother
In something or other,
Unless I can bother
Your heart to love me,
Sweet Molly, Sweet Molly Malone,
Sweet Molly, Sweet Molly Malone.

I can see if you smile,
Though I’m off half a mile,
For my eyes all the while,
Keep along with my head:
And my head you must know,
When from Molly I go,
Takes its leave with a bow,
And remains in my stead. CHORUS

Like a bird I could sing,
In the month of the spring,
But it’s now no such thing,
I’m quite bother’d and dead;
Och! I’ll roar and I’ll groan,
My sweet Molly Malone,
Till I’m bone of your bone,
And asleep in your bed. CHORUS

It’s on the last four lines that Molly’s reputation now rests.

This is not the first Dublin street ballad to be sanatised and dressed up by Victorian songsters. The subjuct of The Spanish Lady was known to lure unsuspecting young men into an ambush where he was relieved of his riches by her boyfriend.!

The contemporary version is as follows:

MOLLY MALONE

In Dublin’s fair city where girls are so pretty
Twas there that I first met sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through street broad and narrow
Crying, “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh”

Alive, alive oh, alive, alive oh,
Crying, “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh”

Now she was a fishmonger and sure twas no wonder
For so were her mother and father before
And they each wheeled their barrows
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, “Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh”

She died of a faver 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”