Digital Tradition Mirror

Net Hauling Song

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Net Hauling Song
(Ewan MacColl)

It's busk ye, my lads, get you up on deck
And take up your stations for hauling the nets
And mind you pull together boys, all through the night
And sweat in your oilskins until it's daylight

  At the heaving and hauling and shaking the nets

It's when we start hauling we're living in hopes
The boy in the locker, the lads on the ropes
And the fellas in the hold who are pulling the nets
And shaking the herring out onto the deck

It's net after net is pulled up from the sea
With a haul and a shake and a one, two and three
And the herring are a piling around your sea boots
And slithering and sliding down into the chutes

It's hour after hour we are hauling away
All through the long night till the dawn of the day
The skipper's in the wheelhouse he's on the R T
And the cook's in the galley a brewing the tea

  And we're finished with hauling and shaking the nets

Copyright Stormking Music, Inc.
recorded by Ewan MacColl
SOF

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!