Seeing as it's the FA cup final later today, I really thought I should add something appropriate. This is a massively popular Liverpool F.C. song, and you can hear it most matchdays in The Albert pub - any 'errors' can and should be blamed on the people drinking there, as that's what I'm basing the version here on! It should be said that this was originally a Rangers F.C. song (cue disparaging comments about how Scousers will steal anything and everything). But of course, the nature of folk music is that it travels and is adapted to new contexts. This version has become pretty solidly rooted in Liverpool F.C. traditions, to the extent quite a lot of Liverpool fans do express surprise when they find out that this is a song borrowed from the singing of Rangers fans. Certainly its been adapted to our needs both melodically and lyrically. The final words of the song ("I'd walk a million miles for one of your goals"), to a tune borrowed from 'My Mammy', pay tribute to Kenny Dalglish, former star player and currently manager.
It should be noted that some people might wonder whether the very idea of talking about "Every other saturday" off is completely obsolete given that most of Liverpool's matches are played on a Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, any other time than Saturday! And can any working person really afford the ticket price on their 'half day off'?
A song written in 1961 by Hughie Jones of Liverpool folk group The Spinners. (Hughie Jones is, of course, still an active part of the Liverpool folk scene; he runs the Everyman Folk Club, which due to the refurbishment of the Everyman met for a while in the Fly and the Loaf but has now moved to a new venue on the corner of Oldham Street and Roscoe Street.) This song commemorates the loss of the SS Ellan Vannin, which sank in 1909.
A song celebrating (or should I say commiserating?) the Irish navvy at work; this version was collected from Albert Gillmore of Birkenhead and published in The Shuttle and Cage: Industrial Folk Ballads edited by Ewan MacColl. Gibb Schreffler, whose knowledge of shanties is greater than my own, has made me aware that the tune here is very similar not only to that used by Stan Hugill, but also one published by Whall in Ships, sea songs, and shanties, so it seems (possibly unlike other variations e.g. that collected from Newton Heath Railway Shed, Manchester and also published by MacColl) that what we have here is a version used at sea.
Although now very much sung by people with their feet on dry land - slightly further south in Cheshire it was even popular with fans of Crewe Alexandra ("the railwaymen") - this song has a long Liverpool association from its use as a capstan shanty. Edward Keble Chatterton, in a 1923 book called The Mercantile Marine, quotes Liverpool shipowner Sir William B. Forwood:
"On the morning of the 20th November, 1857, I embarked by a tender from the
Liverpool pierhead. It was nearly the top of high water. The crew were mustered on the forecastle, under the 1st Mate, Mr. Taylor. An order comes from the quarter-deck. ' Heave up the anchor and get away.' Aye, aye, sir.' 'Now then, my boys, man the windlass,' shouts
the Mate, and to a merry chantie:
'In 1847 Paddy Murphy went to Heaven
To work on the railway, the railway, the railway,
Oh, poor Paddy works upon the railway'
'The anchor is away, sir,' shouts the Chief Officer. 'Heave it a-peak and cathead it,' comes from the quarter-deck, and the tug retriever forges ahead and tightens the tow-rope as we gather way. Bang, bang went the guns, and twice more, for we were carrying the mails, and good-bye to old Liverpool, and the crowds which lined the pierhead cheered, for the Red Jacket was already a famous ship, and it was hoped she would make a record passage."
Irish navvies in their thousands were responsible for work on many of the wonders that made Liverpool a great 19th century power, including the construction Liverpool-Manchester Railway, the world's first inter-city passenger railway. In spite of their essential role for the economy, however, at the time they were more often associated with criminality and disorder, as noted by Roger Swift in The Irish in Britain, who describes "three days of fierce fighting between 300 Irish navvies and 240 English railway labourers engaged on the line of the Chester and Birkenhead Railway" in 1839.
The Daniel O'Connell referred to in the fifth verse was the Irish Member of Parliament who lived from 1775-1847, campaigner for Catholic Empancipation and the separation of Ireland from the Union.
The Spinners sang a different version of this song under the title 'Fillimiooriay'; the song has travelled widely, as witnessed by the existence of American versions with titles like 'Poor Paddy Works on the Railroad' and 'Poor Paddy Works on the Erie'. It is #208 in the Roud folksong index.
Just writing a quick line to say that after a short hiatus, I'm ready to get back into the swing of things here. Temporary loss of hearing took some of the pleasure out of singing for a while, but I've recovered and just enjoyed a great couple of weeks in Liverpool getting my voice back, singing at the Ellesmere Port Shanty Festival and at the singarounds in St. Stephens, the Lion Tavern, and the Derby Arms (Aughton). So I'm very excited to start up my project here again; I plan on posting song number 45 this Friday.
Sadly, a year has now passed since I started, so I haven't reached my target of singing a song a week for a year, but these things happen; and at least this means that I can free myself of the artificial restriction of singing only 52 songs! I now plan on carrying this project through to 60 songs. Which means you'll be stuck with me for a bit longer...
As I've got quite a few shanties and sea songs on here, I thought it was important to include something from the post-WW2 Liverpool ships. Not for delicate ears, this one is studded with expletives - a fine demonstration of the phrase "swearing like a sailor". This is one of a number of songs collected by Ron Baxter of Fleetwood during his time in the Merchant Navy (1966-1974). As he explains, "In 1966, a skinny 17-year-old clad in a navy rain-coat two sizes too big boarded the S.S. Clan Sutherland. The watchman promptly told him, 'Don't be a bloody fool, son - go back home to yer mam!' This was my welcome to the Merchant Navy. But it was on that first trip that I was introduced to a class of songs virtually ignored by folk-song collectors - the Merchant Navy songs... my collection is a mixture of crude, unpolished, light-hearted parodies, although there are several gems. The majority decry the Company, the Master, the Officers, and the engines. They frequently poke fun at gay stewards, though I can't remember ever meeting any homophobics at sea."
The M.V. Statesman is one of a family of songs (usually known as M.V. Hardship) to the tune of 'Villikins and his Dinah' complaining of on-board conditions. This Liverpool version directs its anger at a particular ship in the Harrison's Line, and Ron Baxter notes that "unlike most of the other songs I collected, this is a 'lower-deck' song".
T. and J. Harrison was a shipping line founded in Liverpool in 1853. They liked using the same ship names over and over again, and Harrisons actually had six ships called "Statesman"; the 2nd incarnation of the Statesman was torpedoed by a U-boat during the first world war, and the fourth incarnation was sunk in WW2 by a German air attack off the coast of Ireland. The photo above is, I believe, of the fifth incarnation of the Statesman, built in 1944, purchased by Harrisons in 1948, and sold off in 1962.
A song about a Scouse deserter trying to get back to his girl in Birkenhead. I found two published versions of this song; the first was in Roy Palmer's Everyman's Book of British Ballads. He writes that "this forceful tale of protest goes back at least to 1798, when Irish rebels had a version beginning 'I am a real republican, John Wilson is my name'". The song definitely survived in Liverpool well into the 20th century, and the version Palmer includes was collected by Phil Colclough, a folk revival singer of some note from Staffordshire who in his early life had joined the Merchant Navy and sailed out of Liverpool. Bert Lloyd also collected a version of this song from Frank Jeffries, a "seaman of Liverpool"; his version is published in Sing Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 6 (1962). It's substantially the same as the one from Colclough in both words and tune, only with a bit more ornamentation.
Given that both the deserter and the Birkenhead girl who promised to conceal him in her bedroom would have been severely punished for their actions, in a certain sense this is as much a song of daring as many tales of wartime heroism. I certainly start to admire the Rambling Royal's swagger and bravado by the time it gets to the last verse.
In the Roud folksong index, this is #982, grouped together with other deserter songs that are clearly very close relations, including 'The Belfast Shoemaker'.
A public service announcement warning sailors about unscrupulous brasses, this song is as scouse as scouse. Several versions are given by Stan Hugill in Shanties of the Seven Seas, and the song retained a popularity well into the 1960s as a standard for skiffle groups - The Beatles, recalling it from their skiffle days as The Quarrymen, recorded a fragment of it on Let It Be.
As a town catering for sailors, Liverpool was riddled with prostitutes. As the sign above suggests, it's not without them today. A popular topic of conversation surrounding this song is whether Maggie May was a real person or simply an archetypal lady of the night; Hughie Jones of the Spinners remarks: "My first job was as an office boy in Duke Street and I’d heard the rumour that Maggie May lived at number 17. One day somebody came in and said a funeral has just gone by and it was Maggie May and that was in 1952. I thought that can’t be true because I’ve always known the song... Was she still alive in the 50s? It is possible. Maggie May had many contemporaries of course. One was called Jumping Jenny and the famous one was The Battle Ship, pretty ominous really."
