Alive, Alive, Oh!

An unsettling encounter with the living ghost of Dublin's fabled Molly Malone.

Amiens Street Tenement Basement, by Drew Douglas.

In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

She died of a fever
And sure 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!’

—Molly Malone, James Yorkston, 1884.

A woman stops me on Amiens Street. She is old, but not elderly. Homely but not entirely unattractive. Beautiful once, perhaps, but time has not been kind to her. She is leaning on an empty shopping trolley like Molly Malone on her famous fish cart.

'Howaya, luv,’ she gurgles in a thick Dublin accent that reinforces that initial impression. ‘Can ye get me bucket and spade?'

'Alright,' I say in a reedy Dublin accent that suggests I study at Trinity and live in Foxrock (I have no formal eduction and inhabit on…