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My Johnny / Barney

[ Roud 1422 ; Henry H7 ; Ballad Index HHH007 ; trad.]

Cecilia Costello of Birmingham sang My Johnny an a BBC recording made my Marie Slocombe and Patrick Shuldham-Shaw on 30 November 1951. This recording was included in 1975 on her Leader album Cecilia Costello and, together with a second recording made by Peter Kennedy on 11 August 1951, in 2014 on her Musical Traditions anthology Old Fashioned Songs. Rod Stradling commented in the latter's booklet:

Not a song much found in the oral tradition, with only 25 Roud entries—although my parents’ generation knew it well as My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean, with its “Bring back, bring back” chorus. This certainly didn’t have the fine aeolian tune Mrs Costello uses here, though her text has more than a hint of Victorian sentimentality. It was known in England and the USA, and Charles Demspey, from Derry, is mentioned as the only Irish singer. The only other recorded version is by Chris Bouchillon of Atlanta, Georgia (Old Hat CD 1005), who tags a parody verse and chorus onto the end of his talking blues, Born in Hard Luck.

Hedy West sang Blow Ye Gently Winds in 1966 on her Topic album Pretty Saro and Other Appalachian Ballads. It was also included in 2011 on her Fellside anthology Ballads & Songs from the Appalachians. She commented in the original album's notes:

Blow Ye Gentle Winds could be a commercial product of full-time or part-time professional musicians in the early country music business. I’ve only heard it from Grandma, and she doesn’t remember where it came from. Perhaps from a phonograph record or from the radio. Since the 1920s phonograph records realised large sales in rural America, and had a strong impact on native music. There’s a cartoon of a typical caricature mountaineer, scrawny and barefooted, saying to a folk song collector: “I learnt that one from my pappy. He had all the records.”

Lal and Norma Waterson sang Barney in 1975 on the Watersons' album For Pence and Spicy Ale. It was also included in 2004 on the Watersons' 4CD anthology Mighty River of Song. A.L. Lloyd commented in the original album's sleeve notes:

A stage song favoured by Irish comedians from the 1860s on. During the 1880s, apparently on American University campuses, close harmony groups remade it in to the better-known—and even more preposterous—My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean. The Watersons had this from Bob Davenport who learnt it from a Frank Quinn (78).

Anni Fentiman sang My Johnny in 1996 on her and Dave Webber's album Bonnet & Shawl. They credit their version to the recordings of Cecilia Costello.

Vic Shepherd and Lizzie Bowden sang Deep Blue Sea in 2015 on Vic's and John Bowden's Hallamshire Traditions CD Still Waters. They noted:

Vic learned this song many years ago from the singing of Cecilia Costello. Mrs Costello was born in Birmingham of Irish parents who had fled the famine in Ireland, and much of her repertoire reflects her Irish roots, albeit delivered in a broad Brummie accent! Although she had a relatively small repertoire of only seventeen songs, they included four Child ballads. among them the rare The Lover's Ghost (Child 248), which Mrs Costello called The Grey Cock, and which was included in The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.

We like this interesting variation of the Bring Bock My Bonnie family. which succinctly describes the hopes and fears of a young woman hoping her lover will return in one piece from the seas.

Lyrics

Acknowledgements

Transcribed from the singing of the Watersons by Garry Gillard.