The Ballad of Molly Mogg (first published as "Molly Mogg, or the Fair Maid of the Inn") is a poem written by John Gay

John Gay

John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...

 with contributions from Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 and Dean Swift. It is written about Molly Mogg, the beautiful barmaid at the Rose Inn, Wokingham

Wokingham

Wokingham is a market town and civil parish in Berkshire in South East England about west of central London. It is about east-southeast of Reading and west of Bracknell. It spans an area of and, according to the 2001 census, has a population of 30,403...

, England.

Background

In the early 18th century, Gay, Swift and Pope were regular customers to the Rose Inn public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 in Wokingham

Wokingham

Wokingham is a market town and civil parish in Berkshire in South East England about west of central London. It is about east-southeast of Reading and west of Bracknell. It spans an area of and, according to the 2001 census, has a population of 30,403...

, which was run by John Mogg (though John Timbs

John Timbs

John Timbs , English antiquary, was born in Clerkenwell, London.He was educated at a private school at Hemel Hempstead, and in his sixteenth year apprenticed to a druggist and printer at Dorking. He had early shown literary capacity, and when nineteen began to write for the Monthly Magazine...

 identifies the public house as the Rose Inn in Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

) On one visit, they were forced to stay in the inn longer than planned due to a storm. To pass the time, they wrote verses about Molly, the attractive eldest daughter of the landlord

Landlord

A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant . When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner...

. The poem alludes to the melancholy mood of Edward Standen, the heir to Arborfield Manor and customer of the inn, who had fallen in love with (and was repeatedly rejected by) Molly.

Molly was born in 1699 and never married, despite her beauty. She died a spinster

Spinster

A spinster, or old maid, is an older, childless woman who has never been married.For a woman to be identified as a spinster, age is critical...

 at the age of 67 in 1766. Her death record named her as "Mary Mogg" and described her as "advanced in years but in her youth a celebrated beauty and toast, possessed of a good fortune that she has left among her relations". Her only brother had no son, so when Molly died the Mogg family name ended. Edward Standen died in 1730 at the age of 27.

Poem

Says my Uncle, I pray you discover,

What hath been the cause of your woes,

Why you pine and you whine like a lover?

I've seen Molly Mog of the Rose.

Oh, nephew, your grief is but folly,

In town you may find better prog;

Half-a-crown there will get you a Molly,

A Molly much better than Mog.

I know that by wits 'tis recited

That Women at best are a clog,

But I'm not so easily frightened

From loving my sweet Molly Mog.

The School Boy's delight is a play day,

The School Master's joy is a flog.

The Milkmaid's delight is a May day,

But mine is on sweet Molly Mog.

Will of wisp leaves the traveller gadding

Through ditch and through quagmire and bog.

But no light can set me a-madding

Like the eyes of my sweet Molly Mog.

For guineas in other men's breeches

Your gamester will palm and will cog,

But I envy them none of their riches,

So I may win sweet Molly Mog.

The heart when half wounded is changing,

It here and there leaps like a frog.

But my heart can never be ranging,

'Tis so fixed upon sweet Molly Mog.

Who follows all Ladies of pleasure

In pleasure is thought but a hog.

All the sea cannot give so good measure

Of joys as my sweet Molly Mog.

I feel I am in love to distraction,

My senses all lost in a fog,

And nothing can give satisfaction

But thinking of sweet Molly Mog.

A letter when I am indicting,

Comes Cupid and gives me a jog,

And I fill all the paper with writing

Of nothing but sweet Molly Mog.

If I would not give up the three Graces

I wish I were hanged like a dog,

And in court all the drawing-room faces,

For a glance of my sweet Molly Mog.

Those faces want nature and spirit

And seem as cut out of a log;

Juno, Venus and Pallas's merit

Unite in my sweet Molly Mog.

Those who toast all the family Royal

In bumpers of hogan and nog,

Have hearts not more true or more loyal

Than mine to my sweet Molly Mog.

Were Virgil alive with his Phillis,

And writing another eclogue,

Both his Phillis and fair Amaryllis

He'd give up for sweet Molly Mog.

While she smiles on each guest like her liquor,

Then jealousy sets me agog,

To be sure she's a bit for the Vicar,

And so I shall lose Molly Mog.

Legacy

The poem was first published in 1726 in Mist's Weekly Journal, and was described as having been "writ by two or three men of wit, upon the occasion of their lying at a certain Inn at Ockingham, where the daughter of the House was remarkably pretty, and whose name was Molly Mog."

The Welsh ballad "Gwinfrid Shones" (published in 1733) also mentions Mogg:

Some sing Molly Mogg of the Rose,

And call her the Oakingham belle;

Whilst others does ferces compose,

On beautiful Molle Lapelle.

Molly Mogg's, a public house in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

's Soho

Soho

Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...

 district (at the junction of Old Compton Street

Old Compton Street

Old Compton Street runs east-west through Soho, London, England.- History :The street was named after Henry Compton. who raised funds for a local parish church, eventually dedicated as St Anne's Church in 1686...

 and Charing Cross Road

Charing Cross Road

Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...

) is named after Mogg.