Molly Bawn

Samuel Lover’s serenade beneath Molly’s window, with words and music both credited to Lover, widely printed as sheet music in the mid-nineteenth century under the fuller title “Oh! Molly Bawn Why Leave Me Pining.” The conceit is gently comic — the flowers have been put to bed by Mother Nature, the stars shine because they’ve nothing else to do, and the watchdog snarls because he knows the singer would steal Molly away. John McCormack’s recording carried the song into the twentieth century.