Hanging Johnny

It was the Barry Island Festival of the Sea over last weekend, and being a shwag (shanty wife or girlfriend) I was there supporting my husband’s band, the Beach’d Buoys. Shanties are traditional songs sung by people working as sailors or dockers or anyone connected with boats and ships – sung as rhythmic work songs, for entertainment on voyages, and no doubt just for the enjoyment of singing. They have become very popular over recent years, although I remember singing them at school as a child, along with other old and traditional “folk” songs.

The Beach’d Buoys have a large repertoire, but when they perform they have regular shanties which they choose to make an interesting and varied set-list, and to feature the different voices of the ‘Buoys’. My husband sings a couple, one of which is ‘Hanging Johnny’ written (or at least written down) by Stan Hugill

Stanley Hugill – 19 November 1906 – 13 May 1992,  a British folk music performer, artist and sea music historian, known as the “Last Working Shantyman” and described as the “20th century guardian of the tradition”.
Wikipedia

To be honest, although with a very interesting back-story, and very well and powerfully sung by my husband, it is somewhat gloomy. If anyone thinks of sea shanties, the chances are people will think of lively, jolly songs such as ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor’ and ‘Blow the man down’, but in fact the genre is much more varied and interesting. The different shanties are sung with different rhythms for different purposes, and ‘Hanging Johnny’ is a halyard shanty – here  how Stan Hugill described the use of this shanty:

“The word ‘Hang’ was often used when ‘swinging’. In this manoeuvre (when a buntline or clewline or light halyard had to be given a few final strong pulls), one man took a part turn with the line around the portion of the belayin’-pin beneath the pin rail, while two or three other seamen with their hands as high as they could place them gripped the line and fell backward heavily, then ‘giving in’ the resultant slack to the chap at the pin… Probably the melancholy tune and macabre lyrics and rhythm length itself made this song one of the best halyard shanties ever.

“https://traditionalshanties.com/2022/11/06/hanging-johnny/

No-one exactly knows the true back-story of this shanty – it may be about the real-life but infamous hangman Jack Ketch (who died in 1686)  I must say I’ve learned quite a lot about eighteenth and nineteenth century sailing, about the life of the sailors, and life on board ships through being a shwag!