Is the Illuminati real?

Irish History #2

They were all wrong, lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nostradamus

July 1999 came and well, there was no fire from the skies…………………………….

The Mayans –

December 2012 passed and the world is still here………………………………………….

Y2K

All I recall about Y2K is that Y2J was way better. If you get that joke, you rock. Pet yourself on the back.

 

Irish History #24

10. The Banshee

The Banshee was a woman who carried with her an omen of death. Sometimes you saw the Banshee as an old woman dressed in rags, sometimes you saw her as a young and beautiful girl and sometimes you saw her as a wash woman, ringing out bloody clothing. Whenever she was seen, she let out a horrible cry and legend has it this cry brought death to any family that heard it. King James I of Scotland thought he was approached by a Banshee. Shortly after, he died at the Earl of Atholl.

9. Pookas

The Pookas are a certain type of fairy- one bent on creating havoc in the mortal world. The Pooka appeared at night across rural Ireland and the seaboard. On a good day, the Pooka would cause destruction on a farm- tearing down fences and disrupting the animals. On a bad day, the Pooka would stand outside the farmhouse and call the people outside by name. If anyone came out, the Pooka would carry them away. The Pookas also loved to mess with the ships pulling away from Ireland, and were blamed for many shipwrecks along the rocky coast.

8. Changelings

As legend has it, female fairies often give birth to deformed children. Since the fairies prefer visually pleasing babies, they would go into the mortal world and swap with a healthy human baby, leaving behind a changeling. While the changeling looked like a human baby, it carried none of the same emotional characteristics. The changeling was only happy when misfortune or grief happened in the house. The changeling legend has lasted for centuries. William Shakespeare talks of a changeling in his play, “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” Three hundred years later, Scarlett O’Hara believed Rhett Butler’s illegitimate child was a changeling in “Gone with the Wind.”

7. Dagda’s Harp

In Irish mythology, the Dagda was a high priest who had a large and beautiful harp. During a war, a rival tribe stole Dagda’s harp and took it to an abandoned castle. Dagda followed the tribe and called to the harp. The harp came to Dagda and he struck the chords. The harp let out the Music of Tears and everyone in the castle began to cry. Dagda struck the chords again and the harp played the Music of Mirth and all the warriors began to laugh. Then, Dagda struck the chords a final time and the harp let out the Music of Sleep. Everyone but Dagda fell into a deep sleep, allowing him to escape with his magical harp unharmed.

6. The Children of Lir

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The story of the Children of Lir comes from the Irish Mythological Cycle. Lir was the lord of the sea. He had a wife and four children. When Lir’s wife died, he married his wife’s sister, Aoife. Aoife was jealous of Lir’s children and wanted to be rid of them. One day Aoife took the children to a lake. While they were swimming she performed a spell on them and turned them into swans. Under the spell the children were to remain swans until they heard the sound of a Christian bell. The swans swam from lake, to river to stream for years waiting for the sound of that bell, but it wasn’t until St. Patrick came to Ireland that the children could be free of the curse- 900 years later.

5. St. Patrick

To most people, St. Patrick is the man who brought a day of good times and green beer to pubs across the world. In reality, St. Patrick wasn’t made a saint until centuries after his death and he wasn’t even Irish. St. Patrick was born in Britain to a wealthy family. During his childhood, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. During his years in slavery he converted to Christianity and once freed he did spend the rest of his life teaching the Irish about the Christian religion, but he was soon forgotten after his death. It wasn’t until many years later that monks began telling the tale of St. Patrick forcing all the snakes out of Ireland. Something he never could have done as there never were any snakes in Ireland.

4. The Shamrock

The three green leaves of the Shamrock is more than the unofficial symbol of Ireland and one of the marshmallows in Lucky Charms. The Shamrock has held meaning to most of Ireland’s historic cultures. The Druids believed the Shamrock was a sacred plant that could ward off evil. The Celtics believed the Shamrock had mystical properties due to the plant’s three heart-shaped leaves. The Celtics believed three was a sacred number. Some Christians also believed the Shamrock had special meaning- the three leaves representing the Holy Trinity.

3. Finn MacCool

Finn MacCool is a mythological warrior that appears in several Irish legends. One popular story tells of a salmon that knew all of the world’s knowledge. Finn decided to eat the Salmon to gain the knowledge. As he was cooking the fish, juice squirted out and burned Finn’s thumb. Finn stuck his thumb in his mouth to stop the pain and instantly learned the knowledge the salmon carried. From then on, anytime Finn sucked his thumb he gained whatever knowledge he was seeking.

2. Faeries

Faeries exist in some form in mythology all over the world but hold a special importance to the Irish. The fairy society in Ireland is thought to be very much alive, and far from Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell. An Irish fairy can take any form she wishes, but will usually choose a human form. They are said to be beautiful, powerful and hard to resist, which is unfortunate because most fairies in Ireland love to bring misfortune and bad luck to the mortals who come near them.

1. Leprechauns

The leprechaun is likely the most widely known type of fairy living in Ireland. Leprechauns have been in existence in Irish legend since the medieval times. Traditionally, leprechauns are tall fairies and often appear to humans as an old man – much different from the modern view of a small, childlike fairy in a green suit. As legend holds, Leprechauns love to collect gold, which they store in a pot and hide at the end of a rainbow. If a human catches a leprechaun, the fairy must grant the human three-wishes before he can be released.

Read more: http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-irish-myths-and-legends.php#ixzz2ObTui2km

Irish History #20

verse 1

In Dublins fair city, where the girls are so pretty,
I once met a girl called sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow, through the streets broad and narrow,
Cryng cockles and mussels` Alive alive o

Chorus

Alive alive oh,
Alive alive oh
Crying cockles and mussels,
Alive alive oh.

Verse 2

She wheeled her wheelbarrow through the streets broad and narrow,
Just like her mother and father before
And they wheeled their wheel barrow,
through the streets broad and narrow,
crying cockles and mussels alive alive oh

My love had a fever and no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone,
But her ghost wheels her barrow
through the streets broad and narrow
crying cockles and mussels alive-alive oh.

Irish History #18

Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona

Chun gach mo chomhghleacaithe Gaeilge Meiriceánaigh, Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona. Inniu an lá mór a bheith bródúil as ár n-oidhreacht mór. Daoine as gach cultúr ar domhan sa lá atá inniu ceiliúradh a dhéanamh ar ár lá speisialta. Inniu, tá gach duine ar bheagán Gaeilge, nó mar sin deir siad. Tonn Let s na bratacha na hÉireann, deoch go pionta agus scéal ard nó dhó a insint.

Níl níos mó ná ól inniu. Sa lá atá inniu faoi cairdeas. Roinnt scéal le daoine eile. Ag insint scéalta grinn agus cúpla a fheiceáil aoibh gháire ar an duine ar aghaidh. Agus ar ndóigh, tá cúpla pionta beorach na hÉireann. Nó a lámhaigh nó dhá cheann de roinnt uisce beatha Gaeilge mhaith. Just a cuimhnigh, cairdeas maith is tábhachtaí.

Bíodh spraoi agus a lán deoch. Bí sábháilte agus tuiscint coiteann a úsáid lá atá inniu ann. Ná deoch agus tiomáint. Ná lig chairde tiomáint atá ar meisce. Sa lá atá inniu tá thart ar spraoi. Ní Spraoi chiallaíonn go bhfuil easpa de chiall is coitianta. Ní lá atá inniu ann fiú a chailliúint do cheadúnas, a bheith gafa nó marú duine éigin nó tú féin. Ní lá atá inniu faoi ar féidir leo a ól an chuid is mó, blacking amach nó DUI ar. Sa lá atá inniu mar gheall ar an Harp, Shamrock agus Glas, Bán agus Óir.

 

Irish History #17

Full story here

It is known that St. Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century. He is believed to have died on March 17, around 460 A.D. Although his father was a Christian deacon, it has been suggested that he probably took on the role because of tax incentives and there is no evidence that Patrick came from a particularly religious family. At the age of 16, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family’s estate. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity. (There is some dispute over where this captivity took place. Although many believe he was taken to live in Mount Slemish in County Antrim, it is more likely that he was held in County Mayo near Killala.) During this time, he worked as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for solace, becoming a devout Christian. (It is also believed that Patrick first began to dream of converting the Irish people to Christianity during his captivity.)

St. Patrick: Guided By Visions

After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice—which he believed to be God’s—spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.

To do so, Patrick walked nearly 200 miles from County Mayo, where it is believed he was held, to the Irish coast. After escaping to Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation—an angel in a dream tells him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Soon after, Patrick began religious training, a course of study that lasted more than 15 years. After his ordination as a priest, he was sent to Ireland with a dual mission: to minister to Christians already living in Ireland and to begin to convert the Irish. (Interestingly, this mission contradicts the widely held notion that Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland.)

St. Patrick: Bonfires and Crosses

Familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick chose to incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity instead of attempting to eradicate native Irish beliefs. For instance, he used bonfires to celebrate Easter since the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fire. He also superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that veneration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish. Although there were a small number of Christians on the island when Patrick arrived, most Irish practiced a nature-based pagan religion. The Irish culture centered around a rich tradition of oral legend and myth. When this is considered, it is no surprise that the story of Patrick’s life became exaggerated over the centuries—spinning exciting tales to remember history has always been a part of the Irish way of life.

Irish History Month #3

Vikings in Ireland

The Coming of the Vikings Who were the Vikings? They were a group of people who originated in modern-day Denmark and Norway. In the 700s, pressure on land in Scandanavia had forced many nobles and warriors to seek land elsewhere. Some of these were younger sons, who stood to inherit nothing of their father’s estate. Noblemen with little to lose began to gather together groups of warriors and go down the coast pillaging settlements. They sold their booty for money, much like the black markets of today, and this became the means of making their living. The invention of the longboat made it possible for these warriors to sail across the North Sea to attack Britain, France and Ireland as well. In these areas they became known as the “Norsemen” (literally, north-men) and laterally as the “Vikings”. They called themselves “Ostmen”. The Vikings who first attacked Ireland were Norwegian while those in Britain were usually Danish. Being pagans, the Vikings did not have any respect for Christian symbols and sites. The picture on the left shows the Oseberg Ship, a reconstructed Viking raiding boat (Photo by Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo).

The first raids in the British Isles was in 793, when the great monastery at Lindisfarne was sacked. In Ireland, Rathlin island monastery was burned by the Vikings in 795. Other prominent monasteries that were attacked included Holmpatrick, Inishmurray, Inishbofin and Sceilg Mhicil. Sceilg Mhicil’s abbot died of thirst as a Viking prisoner. St Colum Cille’s great monastery at Iona was burned in 802. For the next 30-40 years, the Vikings engaged in hit-and-run raids where they landed a small number of ships at a settlement, spent a few days pillaging and burning it before heading back to Scandanavia to sell their booty. The Vikings were after two types of booty – riches and slaves – which they carried off to sell. They soon found that the monasteries were the richest sources of both goods and this is why monasteries suffered so much. However, the Vikings also attacked a lot of grád Fhéne (commoner’s) dwellings.

The brutality that the Vikings displayed towards their prisoners, and their apparent disrespect for anything other than booty must have injected terror into those who experienced, and heard tales of, the Norsemen’s exploits. However, the effects of these raids should not be exaggerated. In this phase, there was about one attack per year and the probability of being attacked in any given year was actually quite low. Life went on as normal in Ireland. Nor did the Irish sit back and let the Vikings pillage their coasts. While most Irish attacks on the Vikings met with defeat, a few succeeded. The Ulaid defeated a band of raiders in 811, a band was defeated in Connaght in 812 and one in Munster around the same time.

The Ireland Story BOOKSHOP The raids and effects of the Vikings are covered in: “Oxford History of Ireland” The Raids Intensify However, the Vikings were soon to improve their methods of pillaging. Instead of landing 3 or 4 boats, raiding nearby settlements and going back to Scandanavia, they decided to scale-up. They brought between 50 and 100 boats of Viking warriors, landed, and set up a camp. From this base they then raided extensively into the surrounding countryside for a period of several months. They pillaged monasteries, churches, the fortresses of Irish Lords, and farms. In 836 the lands of the southern Uí Néill suffered such an episode. In 837, the same thing happened on the Boyne and Liffey rivers on the east coast and on the Shannon on the west. In 840 the Vikings spent a year on Lough Neagh pillaging, amongst others, the monastery of Armagh. Many of the scholars and monks of Louth monastery were captured and sold into slavery. In 841 they set up fortified camps at Annagassan (county Louth) and Dubhlinn (present day Dublin). Clonmacnoise, Birr and Clonfert were pillaged and the primate of Armagh was captured and carried off in 845. This was the most intense period of Viking activity, and the Irish Kings seemed to be able to do little to prevent the wholesale destruction of large tracts of their Provinces. The southern Uí Néill were routed by the Vikings when they attempted to drive them out. By the end, many of the monks themselves had taken to fighting the Vikings. However, just as it looked as if Ireland was about to be conquered by the Vikings, and just as the Irish began to develop tactics with which to more effectively attack them, the raids died away. The last major Viking raid of this phase was in 851 by which time they appeared to have turned their attention to Britain. The map below shows the attacks in this period. Meanwhile, many of the Viking settlements developed and grew into towns. Their town of Dubhlinn had a thriving Norse community by the second half of the 800s, and had become the principal supplier of slaves in the British Isles. In time it became a great merchant town, until it was defeated by an Irish attack in 902. After that, the Vikings moved their power base to the Isle of Man and to the growing territory that the Vikings were carving out of Anglo-Saxon England. Other Viking towns had also been defeated, for example Cork in 848, Vadrefjord [Waterford] in 864 and Youghal in 866.

The Second Period of Raids A second phase of raiding began in 914, with the arrival of a large fleet of Viking ships in Waterford harbour. They promptly re-captured their settlement of Vadrefjord [Waterford] from which the Irish had expelled the first Vikings half a century earlier. Reinforced by a second fleet which arrived the following year, the Vikings launched a series of offensives deep into the province of Munster, and later Leinster, where they met little Irish resistance as they pillaged both ecclesiastical and grád Fhéne (commoner) settlements. They plundered the monasteries of Cork, Lismore and Aghaboe, among others.In 917, the Vikings re-captured the settlement of Dubhlinn [Dublin] which the Irish had captured in 902. The king of the Uí Néill, Niall Glúndub, who was the most powerful king in Ireland, decided that the Vikings had to be stopped. He brought together a combined force from the Uí Néill and enlisted the help of the forces of Leinster. They marched against the Vikings in Munster in 917. However, the Vikings routed the Leinstermen, while the forces of the Uí Néill retreated from Munster with no decisive success. Two years later, in 919, Niall Glúndub tried again and attacked Dubhlinn. However, his forces were again routed by the Vikings and Niall Glúndub himself was killed and “the cream of the Uí Néill fell with him” [2]. It was not true to say that it was “the Irish against the Vikings”. In fact, some Irish kings and lords formed alliances with Vikings to attack other Irish lords. The Vikings continued to raid inland from their towns of Dubhlinn, Cork and Vadrefjord. In 921, they founded a new town on the south-east tip of Ireland called Weisfjord (Wexford) and a year later founded the town of Limerick near a ford at the mouth of the river Shannon on the west coast. The Vikings in Ireland, however, spent a lot of effort consolidating the Nordic Kingdom that their Viking collegeaues had been carving out of Anglo-Saxon England (by defeating and assimilating Northumbria, East Anglia and parts of Mercia – see a map of England before the Vikings came). This kingdom would become known as the Danelaw. Back in Ireland, as the influence of the Vikings declined, they concentrated more on developing Dubhlinn as a trading city and by 934 exercised control over the other Viking towns in Ireland. In its day, Dubhlinn was one of the most important cities in the Nordic world, as a trading and slaving centre. In 952, Dubhlinn split from the Danelaw and from then on Dubhlinn had its own dynasty of Viking Kings. See below for a map of Ireland around 950. The Vikings eventually settled down in the lands they had conquered. By 950, the Vikings had stopped raiding in Ireland and developed instead as traders and settled in the lands around their towns. The Vikings in England [3] largely became farmers and fishermen. In France, the Vikings formed the Kingdom of Normandy on the north coast – which would play a major role in history a century later when William of Normandy would defeat England in 1066. The Vikings left many placenames in Ireland including: Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, Strangford, Leixlip, Carlingford, Youghal, Howth, Dalkey and Fingall [an area of modern-day Dublin]. A few of their words were also adopted into the Irish language.

Irish History Month #1

Full story

 

Reverie

As well as being known and sung internationally, the popular song ‘Cockles and Mussels’ has become a sort of unofficial anthem of Dublin city. The song’s tragic heroine Molly Malone and her barrow have come to stand as one of the most familiar symbols of the capital. In addition, Molly’s international pulling power is shown by the fact that she scores hundreds of thousands of ‘hits’ on the Internet, many of them relating to Irish pubs and restaurants bearing her name. It seems perfectly natural therefore that Molly should have been commemorated by erecting a statue to her in Dublin, which monument has become a familiar landmark at the end of Grafton Street. Let us now travel back in time to see what we can find out about the real Molly Malone.

Picture the scene: it is Dublin city 300 years ago, on a balmy summer evening on 12 June 1699 to be precise. The city then was not as we know it now, and in place of spacious, straight thoroughfares there was a warren of narrow, winding streets, through which it would be difficult if not impossible to drive a motor car. We walk down one of these streets on that summer e’en in 1699, when suddenly our attention is attracted by a small crowd gathered around a figure on the ground.

Moved by a mixture of curiosity and concern, we join the crowd to discover what is amiss. We see that the object of attention is a young woman, no longer of this world but with a strange look of peace on her ravaged features. She is dressed in a full-length, full-sleeved, lined chemise, an overshirt and basque of wool, and Spanish zapota shoes. Despite the pallor of death, we can see that she was a fine strong and attractive girl, with an especially well-developed bust.

‘Who is it?’, someone asks. ‘Tis Molly Malone the fishmonger, and she is no more’, replies a young lad. ‘God’s judgment has come upon her’, adds a plump housewife, probably the lad’s mother, ‘for as well as her trade of fishmonger she was a part-time hussy also’.

‘Be charitable and speak ye not ill of the dead, woman!’, interjects another voice. We turn to identify the newcomer, and from his dress and demeanour it is clear he is a medical man, a chirurgeon or apothecary perhaps. Bending down, he examines the dead girl, and after a minute or so rises and addresses the gathering: ‘If this unfortunate female has not been taken by the typhoid fever, then has she succumbed to a disease of venery, and in either case ye had better step back lest ye be contaminated by noxious vapours!’.

We disperse quickly like the rest, making our way back to our lodgings in a nearby tavern. There the talk is all of the dead Molly Malone, and of her short and tragic life. The tavern keeper informs us that Molly’s parents are also in the fish-selling business, and reside near Fishamble Street, where the trade is mostly carried on. ‘In a city full of pretty girls, she was one of the prettiest, and that is how she came to ply another trade as well’, our host tells us sadly.

We learn that Molly had wheeled her wheel barrow from the Liberties to the more fashionable Grafton Street, crying ‘Cockles and Mussels’ as she went. At nights another and less admirable Molly appeared, as her chemise, basque and zapotas were replaced by an even more revealing dress, fish-net tights and stillettoes. Thus provocatively attired, she sallied forth looking for clients, who tended to include students of Trinity College, a place renowned for its debauchery. Yet, we reflect, in all probability Molly was more sinned against than sinning.

Our fascination with Molly brings us next morning to the church of St John, off Fishamble Street, where her funeral is to be held. We join her grief-stricken parents, relatives and friends as the minister begins his sermon. ‘Thirty-six years ago with my own hands I baptised Molly Malone in St Andrew’s Church, and today it falls to me to perform the sad duty of her obsequies’, intones the parson. Having reflected on the godliness of the fish trade – ‘For were not Peter and several of the Apostles fishermen?’ – the minister concludes with an impassioned plea to the congregation: ‘Do not judge too harshly this poor, abused Magdalene who has now herself been hauled in on the net of God’s love’. Afterwards we stand discreetly at the edge of the circle of mourners as Molly’s coffin is lowered into the ground in St John’s Churchyard, writing the saddest and final chapter in her short life.

The years pass, but Molly is not forgotten in her native city. The ballad mongers commemorate her in a song entitled ‘Cockles and Mussels’, which begins, ‘In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone’. On dusky evenings you may still hear the eerie sound of a handcart traversing Dublin’s cobbled streets, wheeled ’tis said by the unquiet spirit of Molly Malone.

During Dublin’s Millennium in 1988, which was held to celebrate the discovery by historical experts that the city had been founded 1,000 years before, it was decided to erect a statue of Molly. This monument now stands appropriately enough at the end of Grafton Street, around the corner from St Andrew’s Church where she was baptised, and in an area where she plied her trades. A thought occurred on the 300th anniversary of her death in 1999: what better way to commemorate her than by declaring 13 June to be International Molly Malone Day, accompanied by a Molly Malone Summer School. Stand in front of Molly’s statue, look into her sad eyes, see almost the tremulous heaving of her bosom, and marvel at the City of Culture where heritage is kept so alive, alive o! (1)

 

Purported baptism record of Molly Malone, 27 July 1663, St John’s Church of Ireland Parish, Dublin

 

The Facts

Discerning readers will have noticed by now that the substance of the above reverie is even fishier than the contents of Molly Malone’s barrow. But if there are those so partial to legend and impatient of fact that they have swallowed the whole thing hook, line and sinker, then they might prefer to surf on out at this point if they wish to avoid disillusionment. Perhaps though the parody has been too broadly drawn? Not at all, as will now be demonstrated. (2)

Sometime in the last thirty years or so, a modestly anonymous individual seems to have decided without any supporting evidence that Molly Malone was a real person who lies buried in St John’s Graveyard near Fishamble Street. This incipient legend was dignified by being committed to print in a serious work exposing the disgraceful destruction of the site of the Norse settlement at Wood Quay, in order to make way for new Civic Offices. (3) It is ironic that such a worthy book should have contributed to the developing Molly Malone legend, and if it was thought that a little white lie would help to protect the remnants of St John’s Graveyard (also on the controversial Civic Offices site), then it was to be of no avail. In fact, Dublin Corporation bulldozed its way through the graveyard, at one point leaving human bones scattered about St John’s Lane, and today there are only about six mostly cracked tombstones left on the site.

Contemporaneous with, or sometime prior to the emergence of the unsupported St John’s Graveyard burial yarn, a visiting American academic apparently raised the possibility that Molly Malone might have died of typhoid fever contracted from consuming infected Dublin Bay cockles and mussels. Thus did the legend begin to grow, and it was positively to snowball during the Dublin ‘Millennium’ of 1988. While the title of this event gave the misleading impression that it celebrated the foundation of Dublin 1,000 years before, in fact the incident commemorated was the capture of the city by Maol Sechnaill II in 989 (not 988), as Dublin of course was founded by the Norse about 841.

The ‘Millennium’ thus encouraged an atmosphere where frothy fantasy could supplant historical truth, and historians and others who objected were dismissed crudely as cranks and party poopers. On 22 January 1988, at a press conference in St Andrew’s Church held to launch the ‘Dublin’s Fair City’ video show, it was solemnly announced that the baptism and burial records of Molly Malone had been discovered in the registers of St John’s Church. (4) The entries in question relate to the baptism on 27 July 1663 of a Mary Mallone daughter of Robert (see image above) and to the burial of a person of the same name on 13 June 1699. St John’s Church was Church of Ireland in denomination and formerly located behind Christ Church off Fishamble Street, but was demolished in the last century. St John’s registers were published in 1906, the originals are held in the Representative Church Body Library and they are now conveniently also available online. (5)

While it is true that Molly is a form of the name Mary, no evidence was produced to show that the Mary or Marys listed in St John’s registers were known as Molly. Furthermore, there are quite a few Mary Malone entries in the Church of Ireland baptism registers of Dublin city, with many more again in the Roman Catholic registers (which date from the eighttenth century only), and there is no logical reason to choose the St John’s entries over the others. Finally, just as it was unwarranted to assume that Molly Malone was Church of Ireland and not Roman Catholic, so too was it capricious to assign her to the seventeenth instead of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.

Such doubts did not trouble the partisans of the evolving Molly Malone legend, and the supremo of the Dublin Millennium celebrations, Matt McNulty, decided to commission a statue of the fishmonger. The contract to sculpt the statue was won by Jeanne Rynhart, who ‘researched the historical background of the statue’. The ‘research’ in question incorporated most of the elements of the Molly Malone legend as it then stood, but added a few new ones as well. Thus not only was Molly portrayed as a ‘Restoration citizen’ in seventeenth-century dress, but with blithe disregard for the poor girl’s reputation, it was also claimed that she was ‘a prosperous trader who freelanced as a prostitute’. More than this, Molly’s ‘sales path’ was identified as extending from the Liberties to Grafton Street and St Stephen’s Green, and it was claimed ‘she would have had clients in Trinity College, which was renowned for its debauchery at the time’. Molly’s statue was also clad with an extremely low-cut dress, on the grounds that as ‘women breastfed publicly in Molly’s time, breasts were popped out all over the place’. (6)

All this was obviously an avalanche of pure and unrestrained fantasy, but the worst blunder was yet to come. In 1989 the completed statue of Molly was placed at the junction of Grafton Street and Suffolk Street, on the stated grounds that this was around the corner from St Andrew’s Church where her baptism had taken place. It will be recalled that the original version of the legend had claimed that Molly was baptised in St John’s Church in 1663, while the new claim seems to have been based on nothing more than a careless reading of the newspaper account of the press conference announcing the ‘discovery’ of the St John’s baptism entry, which conference just happened to have been held in St Andrew’s Church. In any case, St Andrew’s Church of Ireland parish was recreated by act of parliament in 1665 only, and its registers dating from 1672 were destroyed in 1922.

This then is the legend in all its glorious implausibilty, but what of the facts, so far as they can be ascertained? As is frequently the case with research problems of this kind, no definitive or final solution can be offered, but what has been discovered is extremely significant. In the first place, no version of ‘Cockles and Mussels’ predating 1850 was found, nor was it included in, for example, Colm O Lochlainn’s collections of Irish ballads, (7) indicating that it does not fit the mould of a conventional traditional song. The earliest versions of ‘Cockles and Mussels‘ complete with music which have been traced to date were published firstly in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1883, (8) and secondly in London in 1884 by Francis Brothers and Day. (9) While the 1883 version lists no author, the 1884 version describes the piece as a ‘comic song’ written and composed by James Yorkston and arranged by Edmund Forman. The latter version further acknowledges that the song was reprinted by permission of Messrs Kohler and Son of Edinburgh, so there must have been at least one earlier edition published in Scotland, which may well have been the original.

Two variant verses, beginning ‘Twas in Dublin’s sweet city, Where the girls are so pretty’, have been found in the ‘gagbook’ of the Victorian clown Thomas Lawrence, noted as having been provided by John Gee at Cheltenham on 20 February 1871, without any attribution to Yorkston, and this now stands as the earliest sighting of the song. (10) The name ‘Molly Malone’ also features in the title or text of other Irish songs, one of the oldest discovered being published in Doncaster in 1790, and later in Glasgow in 1816, which is set by the ‘big hill of Howth’ in County Dublin, wherein the anonymous author in decidedly inferior verse declares his love for ‘Sweet Molly Malone’, but with no references to cockles and mussels, Dublin City or the fish trade. (11) Molly Malone was clearly widely known as an Irish song character by the early nineteenth century in England and Scotland, and this could have influenced Yorkston’s choice of name. Later editions of ‘Cockles and Mussels’ into the twentieth century continued to attribute the song to Yorkston, and indeed he is credited as the composer on the soundtrack to Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange (1971). However, as the song became naturalised in Ireland the attribution of ‘Cockles and Mussels’ to Yorkston was generally omitted in published versions, encouraging a general assumption that it was an ancient folk song.

At this stage we are in a postion to come to some conclusions, necessarily tenatative as more information may yet come to light. It would appear that the version of ‘Cockles and Mussels’ sung today is not in fact ‘traditional’, in the sense that it does not predate the 1870s and has been credited to the Scottish-based composer James Yorkston. Yorkston may well have been influenced by an earlier folk tune or tunes featuring a Molly Malone, such as the one identified above, and indeed many composers have borrowed themes and even lyrics and melodies from traditional balladry. It is not inconceivable that a real barrow girl in Dublin or even Edinburgh could have played a part in inspiring Yorkston, but it is more likely that the Molly Malone he portrayed was merely a type and not an actual person. The song attributed to Yorkston was a ‘comic song’ replete with mock pathos, and having been performed in music halls, parlours, convivial gatherings and elsewhere it must have gained such popularity and been so widely dispersed that its origins were lost to memory and it was assumed to be just another anonymous folk song. As it was set in Dublin, obviously it would be of special interest there, and indeed in time it evolved into a sort of unofficial anthem of the city.

Before the creation of the bizarre legend that Molly Malone was a real person who lived in the seventeenth century, the writer, and no doubt many others, had an image of the fishmonger as an imaginary figure in a nineteenth-century Victorian setting. The evidence outlined above indicates that this impression is basically correct, and indeed this is the Molly Malone portrayed on the cover of Waltons’ twentieth-century sheet music edition of ‘Cockles and Mussels’. (12) This picture is reproduced above, and it can be seen that Molly is set amid a Victorian Dublin scene, with a silhouette of the now sadly destroyed Nelson’s Pillar in the background. Compare the illustration with the adjoining photograph of the statue and note the details of Molly’s dress, as well as the fact that she wheels a barrow and not a handcart as in Rynhart’s sculpture.

It is submitted that this nineteenth-century image of Molly Malone, backed up by research into period details and of course an intensive study of the origin of the song ‘Cockles and Mussels’, would have formed a better basis for a statue of the fishmonger. Furthermore, it would have been more appropriate to site such a statue in the Moore Street area, where Molly’s present-day successors, the fruit- and fish-sellers, now ply their trade, or if a more fashionable location were deemed necessary, somewhere in O’Connell Street or near the Halfpenny Bridge would have sufficed. Though it might be considered not unattractive in a quaint, kitschy sort of way, the Grafton Street sculpture of Molly nevertheless is utterly false both in its form and in its setting.

But sure what matter is it to take a few liberties with the truth, and isn’t it nice to have attractive fakes when so much of the real heritage of Dublin has been destroyed? Unfortunately, there is a deadly linkage between the kind of pseudo-heritage and disregard for historical truth represented by the Molly Malone promotion, and the continuing neglect and destruction of Dublin’s archaeological and architectural heritage. Faced with criticisms concerning the razing of Norse remains, the destruction of Georgian houses, the dereliction of churches or the desecration of old graveyards, the powers that be can dismiss the criticism as carping, and point for example to investment in public sculpture such as that of Molly Malone as evidence of care for heritage and culture in the city.

So entrenched has the fake legend of Molly become that there was an actual call for the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of her death in June 1999! A pair of contributors on an RTE radio programme of 7 June 1999 suggested that Molly was in fact a Dublin-born mistress of Charles II, and that cockles and mussels should be read as symbols of female genitalia! What we have here is a continuously evolving urban legend, with each new uninformed commentator compounding the errors of those who have gone before. In the course of publicity surrounding the auction of a ‘spare’ Molly statue head in July 2011, the sculptress Jeanne Rynhart revealed that she had originally considered that her subject was Victorian, but that purported ‘new research’ had caused a rethink and a move back to the seventeenth century. (13) The saddest part of the whole muddle is that what we might call the ‘authentic myth’ of Yorkston’s Victorian Molly Malone has been supplanted by a misdated, misplaced and sexually crude image concocted by heritage fabricators.

Just how internationalised Molly Malone has become is demonstrated by the fact that in 2011 a Google search for her name returns over a million hits, over 100,000 images and a couple of thousand YouTube links. Most of these relate to the Dublin statue, to lyrics, music, audio and video files of ‘Cockles and Mussels’, to recurring media coverage and of course to a growing empire of Molly Malone ‘Irish’ pubs and/or restaurants located in places as far apart as London, Glasgow, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Stockholm, Prague, Kentucky, Los Angeles, New York, Cambodia and Singapore. In truth the Molly Malone statue is now too well established as a Dublin icon, with all that she says about our attitudes to historical fact, socialising and perhaps womanhood, to be changed, and for good or ill the ‘Tart with the Cart’ at the end of Grafton Street will continue to be photographed by passing tourists and to give her name to ‘Irish’ pubs and restaurants around the world.

In conclusion, it may be asked just what exactly is the Mystery of Molly Malone? In the writer’s opinion, it lies in how so many supposedly intelligent people could accept uncritically the farrago of invention and misconception encapsulated in the Grafton Street statue, and to this conundrum he confesses he can offer no solution.