Barbara: Shoals of Herring was written by Ewan MacColl and is on his Black and White tape/CD. That should be definitive enough, hey?

isn't entirely true, unfortunately. He changed it from time to time adding/subtracting a verse or so. I once wrote a short paper on it and how the song has acted exactly as if it were a folk song. Interesting as it moved from singer to singer in its early days...Killen, Kelly, etc.

Especially note the verse Lloyd sings in the original presentation, in the radio ballad. It balances & is the same tune as the normally-sung first verse. I like it and add it back in.

Night and day the sea we're daring
Come wind or calm or winter gale
Sweating or cold, growing up, growing old, or dying
As we hunt the bonnie shoals of hering.