I loved Molly Malone at the first sight.
I brought her a flower, and asked for a date.

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.
Molly is commemorated in a statue designed by Jeanne Rynhart,
placed at the bottom of Grafton Street in Dublin,
erected to celebrate the city's first millennium in 1987;
this statue is known colloquially as 'The Tart With The Cart',
'The Dish With The Fish'
and 'The Trollop With The Scallops'.
The statue portrays Molly as a busty young woman in seventeenth-century dress,
and is claimed to represent the real person
on whom the song is based.
Her low-cut dress and large breasts were justified on the grounds
that as 'women breastfed publicly in Molly's time,
breasts were popped out all over the place'.
An urban legend has grown up around the figure of the historical Molly,
who has been presented variously as a hawker by day and part-time prostitute by night,
or - in contrast - as one of the few chaste female street-hawkers of her day.