Dublin, 26.9.2025: Mellifluous Voice and Dublin's Fair City

Statue of Molly Malone by Jeanne Rynhart on Grafton Street, Dublin, photo by Wikimedia user Wilson44691

As we boarded our flight from Dublin to Chicago on the 26th, this happened:

We were in that long line that forms in a tunnel from the waiting room to the door of the plane, as people go through the plane door one by one, sometimes slowly, causing a line to form behind them.

An airport or airline employee comes from the plane door down the tunnel. As we had sat in the waiting room until the flight began to board, he was sitting across from us with two women, all in uniform. I thought they might be flight attendants.

He was 40ish, Irish, curly hair that Steve compared to mine. I could see by his interaction with the two women he was a bit of a ladies' man. Because the job of flight attendant has historically been a "female" job, straight men who do that work often seem to think they have to butch it up, put on an extra macho act to prove they're "real" men.

This man struck me as being a bit in that vein, something like the male flight attendant as we flew to Ireland who kept addressing me as "pahdnuh" (i.e., partner). Puhleeze. I don't care if you're gay, straight, purple or green. Just be nice to me and bring my food and beverages.

So we're standing in the long line in the tunnel waiting to board our flight from Dublin to Chicago, and that Irish man comes down the line pushing a dolly. He stops to talk to a group of young women ahead of us in line, flirting a bit with them.

Then he suddenly begins to sing: 

In Dublin's fair city

Where the girls are so pretty

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone

As she wheeled her wheelbarrow

Through the streets, broad and narrow

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh."

He had an absolutely gorgeous voice, a voice like honey flowing. It rang loud and true up and down the tunnel.

Then he pushed his dolly out of the tunnel and the song ended.