Hanging Johnny

A nice little song this week from John Ruddock who dropped into the session a little while back. John is mainly based in Oxford but comes by this way every now and again. He will be performing at the Bath Folk Festival which is being held from the 13th - 19th August 2012:

"I learned this song off a feller called Adrian in the Cross Guns at Avoncliff. I don't actually know a lot about it, it just makes a nice change to sing one from the hangman's perspective, having done lots of Prickle-Eyed Bush, Sam Hall and the like."

Well, to flesh it out rather, there's a lovely bit of information from the book Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors by Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm, in which Carl Joys remembers the song thus:

"Hanging Johnny" did not refer to a sheriff's hangman, but instead to nimble young sailors who, when a topsail was to be hoisted, would climb to the masthead and "swing out" on the proper halyard. They would then ride to the deck as the men at the foot of the mast brought them down by their successive pulls. Joys recalled one chanteyman who would always tell the boys when to swing out by shouting up to them, "Hang, you bastards, hang!" Then, while the boys were hanging on the halyard fifty feet or more above the deck, he'd start his song and the crew would make two pulls on each chorus. When the boys hit the deck, they would tail on behind the other men and pull with them until the work was finished. Joys added that the word "hang" was "the best goddamn pullin' word in the language, especially on a down haul."

John & Tim

Oh they calls me hanging Johnny
Away boys away
They says I hang for money
And it's hang boys hang

Well first I hanged my Granny
I hanged her up so canny

Well then I hanged my mother
Then me sister then me Brother

Oh they calls me hanging Johnny
They says I hang for money

Oh they says I hang for money
But I do it cos it's funny

Oh the next I hanged a copper
I gave him a right long dropper

Oh they calls me hanging Johnny
They says I hang for money