Fisher Boy / O the Bonny Fisher Lad

[ Roud 3150 ; Ballad Index StoR103 ; Mudcat 14846 ; trad.]

J. Collingwood Bruce, John Stokoe: Northumbrian Minstrelsy John Stokoe: Songs and Ballads of Northern England

Eliza Carthy and The Kings of Calicutt (Andi Wells, Barnaby Stradling, Saul Rose and Maclaine Colston) played this love song from the North East on their eponymous album Eliza Carthy and The Kings of Calicutt. This track was reissued in 2003 on Eliza's anthology The Definitive Collection.

The website of the Australian TV series, The Pure Drops has a video of Eliza and Martin Carthy singing Fisher Boy.

John Conolly sang Bonnie Fisher Lad on 1998 on his and Pete Sumner's Fellside album Trawlertown.

Lyrics

Eliza Carthy sings Fisher Boy

Oh the bonny fisher boy
That brings the fishes from the sea
Oh the bonny fisher boy
The fisher boy got hold of me

On Bamboroughshire's rocky shore
Just as you enter Boulmer Raw
There lives the bonny fisher boy
The fisher boy that beats them all

Oh the bonny fisher boy
That brings the fishes from the sea
Oh the bonny fisher boy
The fisher boy got hold of me

My mother sent me out one day
To gather cockles from the sea
Before I had been long away
The fisher boy fell in with me

A sailor I will never marry
Nor soldier for he's got no brass
But I will have a fisher boy
Because I am a fisher's lass

(repeat first two verses)

Acknowledgements

The lyrics were sent by Ed Pellow to the Mudcat Café Forum. Thanks once again, Ed!