Goodbye John

'Twas on a Friday morning 
I Bid London Town, good bye,
The wind it blow'd great guns my boys
And the waters ran sky high.
As I waved my new Bandana to
My Nancy on the shore,
She sobb'd and sigh'd and wept and cried,
When I sail'd for Singapore.

Goodbye John now don't stop long,
But come back soon to your own Chickabiddy
For my heart beats so, when the winds do blow
That takes away my sailor.

Sweet Nancy was a lass, my boys
Of fifteen stone full weight.
Her face, it was a face my boys
Like a good sized Dinner Plate
She kept a sweet-stuff shop my boys
'T would your eyes do good to see
Sold Lollypops and Tom Thumbs drops
But nought so sweet as she.
 
When I sail'd for foreign parts I'd bring
Back presents to my love
Such as Injin Hats and Turkish Mats
Or a Chinese Turtle Dove,
Sweet Nance would write me billey doos
Which took away my breath
And said as how she lov'd her John
With kind regards till death, so loving
 
One night I had a dream my boys
That Nance appear'd to me
She look'd just like a mermaid boys
What floats about the sea
She wagg'd her tail at me my boys!
And then she shook her head
Then seem'd to speak in fishy tones
And this is what she said -
 
Our gallant craft reach'd home my boys
Next day to come on board
My Nance put off in a boat to meet
Her John whom she ador'd
When messmates, hard the tale to tell
She swerved! the boat capsized!
Down Down to the bottom went sweet Nance
The girl I dearly priz'd.

A song from GW Hunt sung in the Halls in the 1860s/70s by Arthur Lloyd, it survives as sheet music, broadsides and in several songbooks on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was collected by Kenneth Peacock from the singing of Everett Bennett, a traditional singer in Newfoundland, in 1958. Anna Kearney Guigné discusses how a song like this one might have reached the singer in The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, see Angelina Brown. One of three songs Lloyd sang about mermaids, all of which have later been collected from traditional singers. The other two are The Man at the Nore and Married to a Mermaid

The song Featured in Lloyd’s annual tour of 1867: