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Sweet Daffodil Mulligan

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 115209 ; Harry O’Donovan]

Barry Gleeson sang Sweet Daffodil Mulligan on the 2000 Terra Nova anthology Mr Straw’s Hallway.

Lynched sang Daffodil Mulligan on their 2014 album Cold Old Fire. This video of Lynched (now Lankum) with Barry Gleesom is from the album launch on 25 May 2014 in the Button Factory Dublin:

Niamh Parsons sang Sweet Daffodil Mulligan on her and Graham Dunne’s 2015 album Kind Providence. She noted:

I was asked to sing Biddy Mulligan at a ceilí a few years ago, but instead I decided to learn Barry Gleeson’s version of this humorous music-hall song, written by Harry O’Donovan (1896-1973) about Biddy Mulligan’s daughter. Biddy was a character created by Donovan and actor Jimmy O’Dea (1899-1965) who had a very successful musical partnership throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Lyrics

Niamh Parsons sings Sweet Daffodil Mulligan

I’m Daffodil Mulligan, Biddy’s young girl,
And the young fellas call me a peach and a pearl.
I was born at the daffodil time of the year,
So they just called me Daffy, now maybe that’s queer.

Chorus (after each verse):
For I’m sweet Daffodil Mulligan, I am,
All my ancestors come from the Coombe.
And I’m just another, the spit of my mother,
The lady who lives in one room, down in Francis Street.
Sweet Daffodil Mulligan, fresh fish!
Like the sweet Blarney roses that bloom,
I’m bright, hale and hearty, the life of the party,
I’m Daffy, the belle of the Coombe, fresh fish!

It was down in Pine Forest, shady and dim,
That I first met my Jemmy, so tall and so slim,
It was on an excursion, the girls all looked swell,
But I took the biscuit and Jem’s heart as well.

We were married in August when Jem was on strike,
And he took me to Bray on the back of his bike.
Now the strike is all over and Jem, bless his soul,
Has settled down steadily drawing the dole.