Father O’Flynn (Top of Cork Road) – Irish Song Lyrics

“Father O’Flynn,” also known as “Top of Cork Road,” is a cheerful Irish folk song celebrating a beloved parish priest. The melody originated as a traditional slip jig, but gained widespread popularity when Alfred Perceval Graves wrote lyrics to it in the late 19th century and published it in 1880. Graves, an Irish poet and songwriter who contributed significantly to the Irish literary revival, created the character of Father O’Flynn as an idealized representation of the Irish clergy – wise, jovial, and deeply connected to his community. The song portrays the priest as a man who could “read a horse with your thoroughbred trainer” and play a game with the best of them, highlighting his worldliness alongside his spiritual guidance. The tune became a staple in Irish music collections and was popularized internationally through recordings by John McCormack and other notable Irish tenors of the early 20th century.

Lyrics

Of priests we can offer a charmin variety,
Far renowned for lernin’ and piety;
Still, I’d advance ye widout impropriety,
Father O’Flynn as the flower of them all.

Chorus
Heres a health to you, Father O’Flynn,
Slainte and slainte and slainte again;
Powerfulest preacher, and tenderest teacher,
And kindliest creature in old Donegal.

Don’t talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous forever at Greek and Latinity,
Faix and the divils and all at Divinity
Father O’Flynn’d make hares of them all!

Come, I venture to give ye my word,
Never the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from mythology into thayology,
Troth! and conchology if he’d the call.

(Chorus)

Oeh! Father O’Flynn, you’ve a wonderful way wid you,
All ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You’ve such a way wid you, Father avick.

Still for all you’ve so gentle a soul,
Gad, you’ve your flock in the grandest control,
Checking the crazy ones, coxin’ onisy ones,
Lifting the lazy ones on wid the stick.

(Chorus)

And tho’ quite avoidin’ all foolish frivolity;
Still at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the playboy could claim an equality,
At comicality, Father, wid you?

Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
“Is it lave gaiety all to the laity?
Cannot the clergy be Irishmen, too?”

(Chorus)