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The Pressers / My Johnny

[ Roud 5693 ; DT PRESSRS ; Mary Brooksbank (1897-1978)]

The Pressers / My Johnny is a song by Mary Brooksbank about losing one’s lover to press gangs. She sang it at a concert in The Angus Hotel, Blairgowrie, Perthshire, on 13 August 1967. The recording of this concert was released in the following year on the Topic album Festival at Blairgowrie. Peter Shepheard noted:

The song portrays a situation that must have been fairly common in the days of the pressgangs. A girl laments for her love who was pressed to fight in foreign wars.

Ray Fisher sang The Pressers 1982 on her Folk-Legacy album Willie’s Lady. She noted:

The theme of this press gang song is based on remnants of a traditional song. Mary Brooksbank of Dundee, composer of the widely-known Jute Mill Song (or Ten and Nine), added some verses of her own to the existing snippet that she had retained in her memory. The reference to ‘Boney’ (Napoleon Bonaparte) suggests this to be the case. Wee Mary was a bundle of enthusiasm and a joy to listen to. I recall at an early TMSA [Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland] festival in Blairgowrie, Scotland, she enthralled everyone with her songs and poems of love, work and politics. She was one of the quiet giants, although she stood just over five feet tall.

Stravaig sang The Pressers, “from the singing of Ray Fisher”, in 1994 on their Greentrax CD Movin’ On.

Margaret Bennett sang The Pressers (My Johnny), on her 2007 album Take the Road to Aberfeldy. She noted:

Hamish Henderson recorded 71 year-old Mary Brooksbank from Dundee singing The Pressers (1968) which, she said, was based on one of her mother’s old songs. “The words she used, to me were meaningless… then I put my own words, what I thought it would mean… It comes from the Napoleonic Wars you see, and the ‘pressers’ were short for the press-gang. And there’s an Aberdeen word there, ‘hyne’—when Aberdeen people speak about something far away they say ‘hyne awa’. And I like a happy ending, you know, hoping, so I put in that last verse.” And since Mary’s song has the same tune to one I’ve sung for years, I’ve retained the familiar chorus and changed a line in the second verse.

Compare to this song The Weary Cutters, also on Ray Fisher’s album.

Lyrics

Ray Fisher sings The Pressers

There is nocht in this wide world but sorrow and care,
I weary on Johnnie, but Johnnie’s no there.
Sae waesome and dowie, I feel like tae dee
Since the pressers hae stolen my laddie fae me.

I look aroond the steading, but Johnnie’s nae there,
At toil in the hairst field, my hert it feels sair.
When I look tae yon high hills, a tear blin’s my e’e
Since the pressers hae stolen my laddie fae me.

For he’s far ower yon high hills and syne ower the sea,
I ken nowhere my ain dear laddie micht be.
In some foreign battlefield maybe he’ll dee,
Oh, curse on ye, Boney, took my laddie fae me.

Now the bonnie larks singing mocks me in my care
But I’ll go on still hoping till grey grows my hair.
Oh, ye wild winds a blowing far ower the sea
Will ye blow back my bonnie lad Johnnie tae me.