IN DUBLIN'S FAIR CITY
Created on 03/04/2008Latest update on 05/04/2024
Artist: George Potter
Author: James Yorkston/Edmund Forman
Label: Starr
Year: 1917
B-side of The Foggy Dew. Baritone on Gennett's sister label. First published in London in 1884 by Francis Brothers & Day. Author James Yorkston was a Scotsman and since permission was requested from an Edinburgh firm to publish the song, Scottish roots are evident. Still it became the unofficial anthem of Dublin. Opening line "In Dublin's fair city" has always been there, but no one can tell if there was ever a local fishmonger named Molly Malone, carrying her wheelbarrow throught the narrow streets crying "Cockles and mussels, alive alive-o". They did erect a large bronze statue of her on Grafton Street, nicknamed 'the tart with the cart'. That's a Dublin tradition. The statue of Livia lying naked midway O'Connell Street and representing the Liffey river, is locally known as 'the floozy in the jacuzzi', while two bronze shopping ladies at the foot of the west bank of Ha'penny Bridge became 'the hags with the bags'.
Covers:
- 1924:
James O'Neill [for Columbia and in '25 for Harmony, as B-side of The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls]
- 1927:
Terence O'Brien [as Cockles And Mussels for Parlophone]
- 1940:
Maxine Sullivan [as Molly Malone]
- 1940:
- 1940:
Andrews Sisters [as Sweet Molly Malone]
- 1941:
Danny Kaye [idem]
- 1944:
Richard Dyer-Bennet [idem]
- 1944:
Marie McDonald [in film Guest In The House]
- 1945:
James Dunn [idem in Elia Kazan film A Tree Grows In Brooklyn]
- 1947:
- 1947:
- 1953:
- 1956:
Ronald Binge [as Cockles And Mussels]
- 1959:
Tom Astor [in German]
- 1959:
- 1962:
- 1963:
Joni Mitchell [as Molly Malone; one of her oldest recordings archived]
- 1964:
- 1965:
Conny van Bergen [as Molly Dear Malone]
- 1966:
- 1977:
- 1980:
- 2002:
- 2006:
Roger McGuinn [all as Molly Malone]
- 2019:
Dervish [vocal: Imelda May]
Also cut by Peggy Lee, The Clancy Brothers, Dublin City Ramblers, Jules De Corte (piano instrumental) and Johnny Logan & friends.
