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Farewell to Whisky / Johnny My Man

[ Roud 845 ; G/D 3:587 ; Henry H807 ; Ballad Index K272 ; Bodleian Roud 845 ; trad.]

Jessie Murray of Buckie sang Farewell to Whisky to Alan Lomax at the Edinburgh People's Festival in 1951. This recording was included on the anthology Jack of All Trades (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 3; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1968). It was also included as The Ale House in 2006 on the Rounder CD 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh.

Lizzie Higgins sang Johnnie My Man to Bill Leader in Scotland in 1967. This recording was included a year later on the Topic album The Travelling Stewarts. Another recording made by Peter Hall in the 1970s was included in 2006 on her Musical Traditions anthology In Memory of Lizzie Higgins. Rod Stradling commented in the accompanying booklet:

Roud has 31 instances of this song, all from Scotland except Eddie Butcher's version from Magilligan, Londonderry. Isla St Clair has a fine version in Tatties & Herrin: The Sea.

As Greig and Duncan assembled their great pre-Great War collection they noted to their great surprise that —unlike what was taken to be ‘'Scottish Song’ as per Burns and co— genuine Scottish traditional song was not swaggering, maudlin, or pseudo-patriotic, nor did it celebrate drink and drunkenness. Instead, temperance songs such as this one, composed around 1850, were popular, for both on the farms and on the fishing boats inebriation was seen as not only as an occupational danger, but also an insidious destroyer of men and their families. Lizzie learned this as a child—one of her ‘pipe’ songs, which moved her greatly—from her father. The music of Lizzie's version is examined in Tocher 1, (1971), p.16-17.

Norman Kennedy sang Johnny, My Man, Dae Ye Nae Think o' Rising? in 1968 on his Folk-Legacy album Ballads & Songs of Scotland.

Isla St Clair sang Johnny My Man on the 1971 Tangent album Folk Songs of North-East Scotland.

The Boys of the Lough sang Farewell to Whisky in 1973 on their eponymous Trailer album The Boys of the Lough.

Jean Redpath sang Johnny My Man on her 1977 album Song of the Seals. She noted:

Most of the major collections of Scottish song carry at least one version of this song which is also known as Farewell to Whisky. The same Robert Ford (Vagabond Songs and Ballads, publ. Alex Gardner, Paisley, 1904) remarked of it… “a common street song in various parts of Scotland and (it) found ready sale always in penny-sheet form chiefly among those who required most its pointed moral lesson”!

Ray Fisher sang Johnny My Man on her 1991 Saydisc CD Traditional Songs of Scotland. She commented in her album's liner notes:

Few and far between are Scottish songs that portray the evils of hard drinking. The case for the prosecution is listed here; the luckless wife says it's a waste of money, the house is falling down; the children are starving and everyone suffers. Johnny relents and vows to give up drinking, forthwith. This is known as a fairy story!

I got this song from Lizzie Higgins, the daughter of Jeannie Robertson.

Cyril Tawney sang Farewell to the Whisky on his 1994 Neptune Tapes cassette of songs about drinks and drinkers, Down the Hatch. This track was also included in 2007 on his posthumous anthology The Song Goes On.

Maureen Jelks sang Johnny My Man in 2000 on her album Eence Upon a Time. She commented:

Lizzie Higgins' version, which I picked from Ailie Munro's book The Folk Music Revival in Scotland. It was a long time before I could sing this song, my mother's name was Jeanie and my wicked stepfather was called Johnnie! I'll say no more!

Barbara Dickson sang Farewell to Whisky on her 2001 CD For the Record.

Alasdair Roberts of The Furrow Collective sang Johnny My Man on their 2014 album At Our Next Meeting. He commented in their sleeve notes:

A sombre song about that timeless issue—the perils of drink. This version comes from a couple of Aberdeenshire singers: Lizzie Higgins (who learned the song from her father Donald) and Norman Kennedy. Sometimes called Farewell to Whisky, it originally dates from around 1850; it was first published in Robert Ford's Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland in 1899 and later in Ord's Bothy Ballads and Songs (1930). Ord tells us that it was a favourite street song all over Scotland in the 1860s and 1870s.

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