The recent revival of another John Barleycorn thread reminds me that I didn't list Forum entries here. These are the ones that contain substantive information:
Barleycorn/Songwainers
Text(s) as recorded by the Songwainers, who set a traditional text from Fred Jordan to the tune of We Plough the Fields and Scatter.
- Text as recorded by The Johnstons; later identified by Wolfgang as deriving from Colm O Lochlainn's Irish Street Ballads.
- Text of Barley Mow, recorded from Fred Whiting of Kenton, Suffolk, 1985-87.
- "Penguin" text again, this time from the Traffic arrangement of it.
Non-Barleycorn Modern parody.
John Barleycorn
Tune in abc format, with one verse, as printed in Sharp & Marson, Folk Songs From Somerset, 3rd Series. (1906). So far as I can tell, this was noted by Sharp from Robert Pope of Alcombe in Sussex. The rest of the thread deals with unrelated subjects.
There are rather a lot of copies at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads of a broadside edition, by Brereton of Dublin, of the song in pretty much the form printed in O Lochlainn's book, though the final couple reads
The drunkard is a durty man he used me worse than all
He drank me up in his durty gut & spewed me against the wall
Somehow I neglected to mention this in my earlier list. As is usual with Brereton, the sheets are plentiful but badly printed; this is one of the more legible copies:
Lines written on the barley corn Printed c.1867 by P. Brereton, 1, Lr. Exchange St., Dublin.
A completely unrelated song using the familiar metaphor can be seen at the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection:
John Barleycorn Good-Bye A comic song on Prohibition. Words and Music by John Stark. St. Louis, MO: Stark Music Co., 1919.
The Roud Folksong Index assigns the following reference numbers:
(Sir) John Barleycorn: Roud 164
John Barleycorn is a Hero Bold: Roud 2141
John Barleycorn My Jo: Roud 6050
There is some overlap in classification at the moment between the first two; the third appears to be known in one example only (see my first post in this thread).