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]] 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 Scallop s'. 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'. [http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/irhismys/molly.htm 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. However, there is no evidence that the song is based on a real woman who lived in the 17th century, or at any other time, despite claims that records of her birth and death have been located. Certainly, there were many Mary or Molly Malone s born in Dublin over the centuries, but no evidence connects any of them to the events in the song, which was not recorded earlier than the early 1880s, when it was published as a work written and composed by James Yorkston, of Edinburgh. The song is in a familiar tragi-comic mode popular in this period, probably influenced by earlier songs with a similar theme, such as Percy Montross's " My Darling Clementine ", which was written circa 1880. LYRICS In Dublin's fair city, Note on pronunciation: Before the Great Vowel Shift , was pronounced as This pronunciation lingered in Ireland and Scotland (where the song was written) after it had virtually disappeared from England . The word 'fever' would have been pronounced as 'favour', rhyming with 'save her' in the next line. That pronunciation is still sometimes used in this song, particularly in Ireland. The term "fishmonger" is actually connected to Prostitution , at least in the time of Shakespeare (see Hamlet , act two, scene two, the dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius). The "cocles and mussels" may also point in that direction, strengthening the Ambiguity of the song. MOLLY MALONE IN POPULAR CULTURE
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