To answer your first question, I find this on the Internet:

MY JOHNNY WAS A SHOEMAKER
(Irish Traditional)

Steeleye Span


My Johnny was a shoemaker and dearly he loved me
My Johnny was a shoemaker but now he's gone to sea
With pitch and tar to soil his hands
And to sail across the sea, stormy sea
And sail across the stormy sea

His jacket was a deep sky blue and curly was his hair
His jacket was a deep sky blue, it was, I do declare
For to reive the topsails up against the mast
And to sail across the sea, stormy sea
And sail across the stormy sea

Some day he'll be a captain bold with a brave and a gallant crew
Some day he'll be a captain bold with a sword and spyglass too
And when he has a gallant captain's sword
He'll come home and marry me, marry me
He'll come home and marry me

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Is this what you were looking for?

I have no ready answer for your second question. I grew up singing around the house, everything from Stephen Foster to Irving Berlin, and don't remember what my first 'folk song' was. That is, the first one I KNEW was a 'folk song.' I suspect it was 'Little Brown Jug,' because that's the first song my uncle taught me on the guitar. By that time, of course, the Kingston Trio was wailing away on their wailing songs, and whaling away on a good guitar, but I had known 'Brown Jug' forever by then.

The first song I ever learned from a record, instead of by osmosis, was 'Last Thing on My Mind,' from an Elektra sampler record.



Bob Clayton