> Steeleye Span > Songs > My Johnny Was a Shoemaker

My Johnny Was a Shoemaker

[Trad. arr. Steeleye Span]

Gay Woods, lead vocals;
Maddy Prior, vocals

Steeleye Span recorded this song for their first album, Hark! The Village Wait. The record's sleeve notes say:

This version, taken from Colm O'Locklainn's excellent Irish Street Ballads (Vol. II) is only one of several, the song having attained wide currency in both Britain and Ireland, even turning up in a Welsh version in 4/2 time. The word “reive” in the second verse, not to be confused with “reef”, means to draw cord through eyelet holes; implying perhaps that Johnny will be doing a new kind of sewing. Ashley Hutchings: “I don't think we planned to do this a cappella, it just happened.”

A live version from St. David's Hall, Cardiff on December 6, 1994 can be found on the video 25 Live: The Classic Twenty Fifth Anniversary Tour Concert. Another live version from Steeleye's tour in December 1996 - when they were special guests to Status Quo - was released as bonus track on the CD reissue of Sails of Silver.

Lyrics

My Johnny was a shoemaker and dearly he loved me
My Johnny was a shoemaker but now he's gone to sea
With pitch and tar to soil his hands
And to sail across the sea, stormy sea
And sail across the stormy sea

His jacket was a deep sky blue and curly was his hair
His jacket was a deep sky blue, it was, I do declare
For to reive the topsails up against the mast
And to sail across the sea, stormy sea
And sail across the stormy sea

Some day he'll be a captain bold with a brave and a gallant crew
Some day he'll be a captain bold with a sword and spy-glass too
And when he has a gallant captain's sword
He'll come home and marry me, marry me
He'll come home and marry me