Pelrad,

The mystery performer and writer of the song is me.

Maybe it WAS that long ago that I sang it at Mystic. Lord! Where does the time go ? You are missing the first verse.
To wit:

Sweet Molly, me darlin' has gone for a cook,
She's forsaken the springhouse, the kitchen and brook;
Set down her duster, deserted her pal,
And she's gone for a cook on the E-rye Canal.

I usually call the song a tribute to Capt. Michelle Brown, now retired from canalling, who was one of the first of the modern-day tour boat operators on the gradually-reviving Erie Canal (which lies - frozen over as I type this - about 300 yards from here). I sang on her boats for years. Rexford, NY, where I live, is on the eastern end of the canal, just east of Schenectady, NY in southern Saratoga County.

Fact is, the song didn't come to me on the Erie at all. I was wandering around the then-abandoned and now rebuilt old canal hotel/tavern at Smith's Basin on the Hudson-Champlain Canal on a balmy summer day some years ago (find Glens Falls, NY on a map. Smith's Basin is nearby). The song happened in about ten minutes. I've always thought she was just hanging around that old tavern waiting for a mouthpiece and decided I'd have to do!