Molly Flynn

From traditionalmusic.co.uk

MOLLY FLYNN.
Words and music by J. F. Mitchell for Maggie Cline.

I love the neatest gossoon that your two eyes ever saw,
But my mother says she will never become his mother-in-law;
She says that Johnny is a man who'll never make his mark,
So every night the poor boy comes to sing when it is dark:

Molly, Molly, my darlin', Molly Flynn,
Molly, Molly, get up and let me in;
Open wide the window and just pop out your head,
And tell me in a whisper has your mother gone to bed?

In hail or rain, in frost or snow, my Johnny will be found,
It makes me cry to know that I can never ask him round;
I won't be treated like a child, with Johnny I will skip,
Then he won't have cause to say when on our wedding trip:

A song written by JF Mitchell which probably started life in the British music halls, but was later a big hit in American vaudeville and was later sung by many traditional Irish singers.

A song called Molly Flynn was sung in the British Halls by serio-comic performer Blanche Slator, the earliest mention of the song I can find is in 1879:

There are a handful of notices of this type in The Era of 1879 and 1880, but I can find no further reports of Molly Flynn being sung professionally in the UK. There are dozens of reports of amateurs singing the song in the UK- starting in 1882 and stretching into the mid 20th century. With only the title to go on its possible that all or some of these may refer to a different song , but I suspect it is the same song – the timing of its first appearance (c1880) fits with the period when Mitchell was writing songs in Britain (1877-1886) and the warning to “Proprietors and Managers” follows a format used other songs by Mitchell, eg The Scotch Brigade.

We can be more confident about the history of the song in America, In the late 1880s and 1890s the song Molly Flynn appeared in several American songsters, described as “written by JF Mitchell for Maggie Cline.”. Mitchell emigrated to the USA in 1886 or 87, so its reasonable to suggest Mitchell took the song with him and sold the American performance rights to Cline, who made regular appearances in Boston and New York in the 1880s and 1890s, billed as “The justly celebrated Irish Serio-Comic Vocalist” and “The Phenomenal Contralto Vocalist.”

Not to be confused with a mid-20th century song also called Molly Flynn, first line: I have never been to Dublin (c1943)

Here’s a version collected from the singing of George Tompsett in 1957

Sources:

• Entries in the Roud Indexes at the Vaughn Williams Memorial Library: https://archives.vwml.org/search/all:single[folksong-broadside-books]/0_50/all/score_desc/extended-roudNo_tr%3A3547

• Ballad Index
• Mudcat Thread
• Kilgarrif Sing Us
• Lyrics: Wehman’s Universal Songster, Volume 22, p23 (1889) from traditionalmusic.co.uk
• Sheet Music