Hanging Johnny
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A halyard shanty well-attested from the mid-19th century onward. One possible early reference is an 1855 article describing a voyage from Melbourne to England, though it mentions only the chorus line, "Hang boys, hang!"[1] By the 1860s, the full song is documented among former slaves in coastal South Carolina[2] as well as on sailing ships in the Great Lakes.[3]
The Longest Johns released their version of the song on the fifth Pieces of Eight EP, Brigand, on 4 July 2025.
Factoids
"Hanging" here does not refer literally to execution, but rather to some aspect of the work being done. Sources differ about the exact meaning, but in his book The Making of a Sailor: Or, Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-rigger, describing his experiences as a sailor in the early 1870s, Frederick Pease Harlow explains,
The words "Hang boys, hang," are used in a topsail-halliard hoist, when sweating up the yard "two blocks," where, in swaying off, the whole weight of the body is used. The sing-out, from some old shellback, usually being words such as "Hang, heavy! Hang, buttocks! Hang, you sons of ————, Hang!"[4]
Lyrics
As performed on Pieces of Eight.
They call me Hanging Johnny
(Away, boys, away!)
But I never hanged nobody
(So hang, boys, hang!) [continues throughout]
They says I hanged me mother
My sister and me brother
They says I hanged me granny
And I hanged me whole damn family
A rope, a beam, a ladder
I'll hang ye all together
Well, I hanged a rotten liar
But I hanged the bloody friar
They says I hang for money
But hanging's so bloody funny
We all will hang together
It's all for better weather