DeLand Restaurant Guide

For someone who trod this Earth for so brief a period, the youngest daughter of two fishmongers named Patrick and Colleen Malone had a far greater impact on those who knew her, and many who did not, than almost anyone else who had ever lived in the seedy waterfront neighborhoods of Dublin during the early part of the 19th century.

In fact, so great was the outpouring of grief at the funeral of young Molly Malone, struck down by a fever as she blossomed into full womanhood, that the pubs for sixteen miles in every direction were obliged to stay open around the clock for three days following the sad event. Indeed, the reason for this unprecedented communal agony was summed up neatly by the epitaph engraved on the simple stone that graced her final resting place. To wit:

Here Beneath This
Cold, Hard Stone,
Lies Lovely, Lifeless
Molly Malone.
Cruelly Snatched From This
Vale of Tears
At The Tender Age Of
Seventeen Years

To See Her
Was to Love Her.