Call John the Boatman

DESCRIPTION: The singer orders, "Call John the Boatman." A storm is rising, and he is needed -- but he sleeps too soundly for even the tempest to rouse him: "Well, the louder that you call him, the faster he'll sleep." Sometimes sung as a round
AUTHOR: unknown (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1949 (Girl Scout songbook "Sing Together") (but see NOTES)
KEYWORDS: sailor storm
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman, p. 173, "Call John the Boatman" (1 text, 1 tune)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, p. 99, "Call John the Boatman" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #9433
NOTES [402 words]: Steve Woodbury writes about a quest to find the sources of this song. I have shortened these slightly, but the work is all his. - RBW
I found "Call John the Boatman" in Sing Together: A Girl Scout Song Book published in 1949. That's probably the source for its current circulation. However, there are some differences in the words. Sing Together credits John Hilton (1599-1657) for the song, but I couldn't find it in Hilton's Catch That Catch Can or other collections of old rounds....
It turns out that 'Call John the Boatman' was also collected by Doerflinger from an old deepwater sailor who reported its being sung on shipboard. Doerflinger published it in Songs of the Sailor and Lumberjack. (Slight variants in tune and words.) Sing Together credited "Call John" to The School Round Book (n.d.; 1852?) which is available online. They indeed have the tune, credited to Hilton, but with different words: "Now When the Summer's Fruits Are Past." But again, I couldn't find any round with that opening line in Catch That Catch Can or other sources of early rounds. The round, "Call John the Boatman," also appears in The School Round Book!
So now we have the same round, with two different sets of words, attributed to Hilton, but not traceable to Hilton.
Then [I looked] in Rimbault's The Rounds, Catches and Canons of England (1865). To "rescue" the rounds music of the early English composers, Rimbault re-published many of them, with "the words revised, adapted, or re-written by the Rev. J. Powell Metcalfe" to avoid any drinking, ribaldry, or other topics unsuitable to modern use.... Sure enough: there is "Now When the Summer's Fruits Are Past" and the information that Hilton's original words were "Call George Again, Boy." While I didn't find this title in Catch That Catch Can, it is in Drinking Songs, ed by Laura Conrad.
So now we have the round that Hilton actually wrote: "Call George Again, Boy." With Hilton's title... [I located] the round in Hilton's 'Catch That Catch Can' (1652) [Da Capo Press reprint, 1970].
And we have the new (non-drinking) words presumably written by the Rev. Metcalfe (though also published in 1852(?)): "Now When the Summer's Fruits Are Past."
And we have a different set of words, from sometime before 1852(?): "Call John the Boatman." (From the initial words, would appear to derive directly from "Call George Again, Boy.")
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Doe173

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