Dublin may have gained many blessings with the growth of industrialism, but we have lost many pleasant old friends in the street cries of our hawkers. Yesterday, in a sad little by-street, given over to faded gentility, I heard a plaintive voice cry, "Ripe strawberries."
Save for "Coal blocks", it is the only street cry I have heard this year, and "Coal blocks" ' voice is admirably suited for the combat with raucous motor-horns and rattling trams. The milkman's business-like rattle in these noisy days is more efficient, but certainly less pleasant, than his now forgotten cry of "Mugs, jugs and porringers."
Passing a melancholy cockle-seller, it struck me that this age has lost the fine, careless rapture which sent Molly Malone singing of her "Cockles and mussels alive, alive-o," and made our flower women sing "Wall flowers, wall flowers growing up so high, We're all flowers, wall flowers, And we all must die."
The Irish Times, July 14th, 1930.