Occasional Folk Songs

Johnny Todd

This traditional song was collected by Frank Kidson and published in 1891 in a collection called Traditional Tunes: A Collection of Ballad Airs. Kidson's notes for this song say: "Johnny Todd is a child's rhyme and game, heard and seen played by Liverpool children. The air is somewhat pleasing, and the words appear old, though some blanks caused by the reciter's memory have had to be filled up."

A Wikipedia article on the song also states that: "There is also what appears to be a version of the same song, mentioned in the first of the Para Handy stories, written in Scotland in 1905, which claims that the tune was popular around 30 years earlier. The song also appears in the book Songs of Belfast edited by David Hammond (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1986), who heard it from a Mrs Walker of Salisbury Avenue, Belfast, who claimed it dates from around 1900.

The tune for this song was used by the BBC police drama series Z Cars in the 1960s and a recording of the tune arranged by Fritz Spiegl and played by Johnny Keating and his orchestra was a top ten hit in 1962.

In my recording I simply accompanied myself on a soprano ukulele tuned A, D, F#, B which was the most common tuning for the soprano ukulele until the late 1940s. 


The ship in the video isn't going anywhere. It sits in the River Tees in Stockton and I couldn't resist putting in the Photo of the statue of Capt. Cook in Whitby with a seagull crapping on its head.