There’s a rumble on the street
No Hay Pan
The sound of hungry feet
No Hay Pan
Morning breaks once more
Like a ship upon a shore
A boot upon a jaw
No Hay Pan
Now when I was a lad
No Hay Pan
The times they were bad
No Hay Pan
But we did all we could
Break any rule we would
Too hungry to be good
No Hay Pan
We crept into a church
No Hay Pan
And there upon a perch
No Hay Pan
We saw two candles then
We whispered ‘Lord Amen’
And we ate both of them
No Hay Pan
The silence of the town
No Hay Pan
Broken by the sound
No Hay Pan
A lonely mother’s call
Night begins to fall
The longest night of all
No Hay Pan
No Hay Pan
The sound of hungry feet
No Hay Pan
Morning breaks once more
Like a ship upon a shore
A boot upon a jaw
No Hay Pan
Now when I was a lad
No Hay Pan
The times they were bad
No Hay Pan
But we did all we could
Break any rule we would
Too hungry to be good
No Hay Pan
We crept into a church
No Hay Pan
And there upon a perch
No Hay Pan
We saw two candles then
We whispered ‘Lord Amen’
And we ate both of them
No Hay Pan
The silence of the town
No Hay Pan
Broken by the sound
No Hay Pan
A lonely mother’s call
Night begins to fall
The longest night of all
No Hay Pan
Contributed by Dq82 - 2019/5/19 - 19:31
×
![]()
Note for non-Italian users: Sorry, though the interface of this website is translated into English, most commentaries and biographies are in Italian and/or in other languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian etc.
The ballad of Johnny Longstaff
Lyrics taken from mudcat.org
Any Bread? - Carrying the Coffin - Hostel Strike - Cable Street - Robson’s Song - Ta-Ra to Tooting - Noddy - The Great Tomorrow - Ay Carmela - Paella - No Hay Pan - Trench Tales - Lewis Clive - David Guest - Over the Ebro - The Valley of Jarama - Trespassers (da tiny notes)
This song started on a flight to Canada in July 2017 and took a long time to finish. The story Johnny relates in the live show about being served cat meat was going to be its own song but I struggled with how to go about it and so we decided in the end that we’d let Johnny tell the story in his own words (though we edited out the bit where he said it tasted like chicken!) The second verse came from this email from Duncan
I went to see my Aunt, she told me of a story my Dad told her many years ago.
Dad said that he and his mates were banned from every church in Stockton, the reason for this, and as they were suffering from real hunger they stole candles from churches to eat. - Duncan Longstaff
The first verse owes something to this brilliant line in one of my favourite books of recent years
Morning broke like a frying pan - The Tusk that did the Damage Tania James