Molly Malone temporarily away from home
For many years the statue of Molly Malone has stood in the middle of the pedestrians-only section of Grafton Street in the centre of Dublin.
But when I visited the place, Molly was not home. A hardworking member of a family of fishmongers, she was taking a break from selling her "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-oh."
Molly's statue is being refurbished. It seems she was in the way of the new tram line that is being constructed to connect LUAS (Irish for speed) tram routes north and south of the Liffey.
She will clean and refreshed soon, but when she is, she's moving house. Her new home will be outside the Dublin Tourist Office on Suffolk Street. While many around the world sing about her, she works on, pushing her barrow "through streets broad and narrow."
Canadian born, I have no Irish ancestry, although my Newfoundland forbears share much of the idiom of Anglo-Irish speech. Yet we kids learned Molly Malone in childhood, and as a folksinging teen I learned and sang many other traditional Irish songs. My first visit to the old land brought those familiar place names alive.