This is a fine and magic song written by Bob Stuart, who is a sort of footloose
minstrel who sings traditional, contemporary, and his-own music.
He said he got the story from a songbook that told it as a legend of a Nantucket sleighride that ended up on a back
street of the town. There's another verse that I can't remember about how John Taylor sits on his porch and tells the story,
but nobody believes him ....
I've tried to stay as close to the
original as I could, but you should still
hear Bob sing it.
John Taylor left his native home;
After the whalefish he did go,
Round the Atlantic coast and around
Cape Horn
To the South Seas where the whalefish
blow.
Hang on, John; soon you'll see
your native home.
Hang on, John; you'll see Nantucket
shores once more.
Well, his boat was sunk, and, his luck
being gone,
On a rocky island he made his home,
And he prayed and he hoped, and he
dreamed in vain
For a ship to carry him home again.
An old man come walking down the beach,
Harpoon in hand and a smiling face:
"I come from my home on the rolling sea
To carry you back to your native place."
So they sang and rowed, and they sang
and sailed
Until they spied a newborn whale;
The old man harpooned him in the back,
And out to sea they hauled their slack.
They had not been sailing but a month
or more
When "Land Ho!" was the old man's happy
word,
And John saw the cliffs rising from
the beach,
Heard the cry of Nantucket birds.
But they never stopped when they
reached dry ground,
But they hauled their slack into John's
home town,
And John got off at his own front door,
And he never saw the old man, or the
whale, any more