Has anybody here seen Kelly?

First published 1909
Lyrics CW Murphy Music Will Letters Roud  RNV13846 

Music Hall performers Florrie Forde
Folk performances see below 

Kelly and his sweetheart wore a very pleasant smile
 As bent upon a holiday they went from Mona's Isle
 They landed safe in London, but alas it's sad to say
 Poor Kelly lost his little girl up Piccadilly way
 She searched for him in vain, and then of course began to fret
 And this is the appeal she made to everyone she met,

"Has anybody here seen Kelly?
 K - E double L - Y
 Has anybody here seen Kelly?
 Find him if you can
 He's as bad as old Antonio
 Left me on my ownio
 Has anybody here seen Kelly?
 Kelly from the Isle of Man."
 
   When it started raining she exclaimed, "What shall I do?"
 For Kelly had her ticket and her spending money too
 She wandered over London like a hound upon the scent
 At last she found herself outside the House of Parliament
 She got among the suffragettes who chained her to the grill
 And soon they heard her shouting in a voice both loud and shrill.

   After she escaped from several gentlemen in blue
 She very quickly started making headway for the Zoo
 From there she made her way towards Tussaud's great waxwork show
 'Twould be a likely place, thought she, to find her missing beau
 The Chamber full of Horrors very quickly came in sight
 She looked in every corner and then yelled with all her might.

 Last Chorus: Has anybody here seen Florrie? F.O.R.D.E.
 Has anybody here seen Florrie? Find her if you can
 For she's not all skin and bone-e-o
 And you bet it's all her own-e-o
 Has anybody here seen Florrie? What Florrie?
 Florrie from the Isle of Man.

This is a song which I’ve never heard sung in a folk session, but which turns up occasionally in the Music Hall singarounds that I attend.

Florrie Forde appeared almost every summer on the Isle of Man, and played to holidaying workers from Scotland and the North. Her 1908 hit mourning for her lost lover and Italian ice cream vendor (Oh! Oh! Antonio) was said to be hugely popular amongst the Glaswegians who had descended on the Isle of Man for Glasgow fair week (much like the Wakes Weeks in the North when all factories in a locality would close). Published in 1909, this was a deliberate sequel, even better, it name checked the Isle of Man.

Many of Florrie’s songs were written by CW Murphy, who according to Baker, believed that no song had ever attained more instantaneous success than “Has Anybody Here seen Kelly”:

with this song, as with all the songs I write, I never tackled a word or a note of the verses until I had the refrain exactly to my liking. To find refrains which will go with a swing is the secret of success in popular songwriting for the general public.

CW Murphy quoted in Baker

The song had a second wave of success in America when it was introduced into the 1910 musical The Jolly Bachelors.

Sources: