“And for Canny Shiels We Soon Were Baring” 🎶
Canny Shields in one of greatest folk songs ever
‘The Shoals of Herring’ is about a fisherman sailing from port to port along the east coast of England through the summer. It was written in 1960 by Ewan MacColl, but surely the best version is this one by Luke Kelly and the Dubliners. The power in his voice is immense.
With our nets and gear we’re faring
On the wild and wasteful ocean
It’s out there on the deep we harvest and reap our bread
As we hunt the bonny shoals of herring
Oh it was a fine and a pleasent day
Out of Yarmouth harbour I was faring
As a cabin boy on a sailing lugger
We were following the shoals of herring
Now you’re up on deck
You’re a fisherman
You can swear and show a manly bearing
Take your turn on watch with the other fellas
As you’re hunting for the shoals of herring
Now we fished the swarth and the broken bank
I was cook and I’d a quarter sharing
And I used to sleep standing on me feet
As we hunted for the shoals of herring
We left the homegrounds in the month of June
And for canny shiels we soon were baring
With a hundred cran of the silver darlins
That we’d taken from the shoals of herring
In the stormy seas and the living gales
Just to earn your daily bread you’re faring
From the Dover Strait to the Faroe Islands
And you’re hunting for the shoals of herring
Well I earned me keep and I paid me way
And I earned the gear that I was wearing
Sailed a million miles
Caught ten million fishes
We were hunting after shoals of herring
You’re net ropeman now
Or you’re on the move
And you’re learning all about sea-faring
That’s your education
Scraps of navigation
As you hunt the bonny shoals of herring
Night and day the seas we’re daring
Come wind or calm or winter gale
Sweating or cold
Growing up, growing old or dying
As you hunt the bonny shoals of herring
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
