> Tim Hart and Friends > Songs > Cockles and Mussels

Cockles and Mussels / Molly Malone

[ Roud 16932 ; Ballad Index FSWB124B ; DT MOLLYMAL ; Mudcat 16278 ; trad.]

Tim Hart sang Cockles and Mussels in 1983 on Tim Hart and Friends’ album Drunken Sailor and Other Kids Songs. This track was later included on their compilation CD Favourite Nursery Rhymes and Other Children’s Songs.

Martyn Wyndham-Read sang Cockles and Mussels in 1984 on the Greenwich Village album The Old Songs.

The Dubliners sang Molly Malone on their 1987 album Celebration (25 Years) and on the 1994 French anthology Planète Celtique.

Lyrics

Tim Hart sings Cockles and Mussels

In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty,
There I first set eyes on sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow,
Through the streets broad and narrow,
Crying, “Cockles and mussels alive, alive o”

Chorus (after each verse):
“Alive, alive o, alive, alive o,”
Crying, “Cockles and mussels
Alive, alive o.”

She was a fishmonger, and that was no wonder,
For so were her father and mother before,
And they both wheeled their barrow,
Through the streets broad and narrow,
Crying, “Cockles and mussels alive, alive o”

She died of a fever, and no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone;
Now her ghost wheels her barrow,
Through the streets broad and narrow,
Crying, “Cockles and mussels alive, alive o”