Because there just weren't enough John Barleycorn songs in the world.

The Sickle and the Plow
© Allison Lonsdale 1996
Live at Lestat's, Disc Two, Track 11

At the gallows and the birthing-chair, in battlefield and bed
It's an old and lovely dance we do, all the living and the dead
Your partner may be a corpse or a child, take her hand and take a bow
For the piper has begun to play "The Sickle and the Plow".

        To the sickle and the plow me boys, let us raise our tankards high
        For before that he can live again John Barleycorn must die

There were three kings came out of the West in keeping with a vow,
And they carried gold and frankincense, and a sickle, and a plow,
And they neither walked nor rode seeking one who was neither free nor slave,
Till they came unto John Barleycorn to lay him in his grave.

They wedded him to the soft brown earth and he lay down with his bride,
And she folded him in her cool dark arms and in that embrace he died.
But the seed he spilled in dying filled the belly of the earth,
And the seasons turned and the rain fell down and she brought his son to birth.

        To the sickle and the plow me boys, let us raise our tankards high
        For before that he can live again John Barleycorn must die

In the image of his father then he grew up fine and tall,
Till at last he wore a crown of gold which did amaze them all.
In the name of both his parents then they cut him off at the knee,
And they laid his body in a cart and took him to the brewery.

You may know him by the crook and flail as the lord of all that's born
And you may know him by the torches twain and the bull caught by the horns
You may know him hung on the tree and wearing a crown of thorns
Let's raise a glass to toast them all, it's just John Barleycorn

        To the sickle and the plow me boys, let us raise our tankards high
        For before that he can live again John Barleycorn must die

In the straw below the headsman's block, in the straw behind the barn
Everywhere that life is made or lost, there walks John Barleycorn.
In his name we drink and fight and love, till at last we must lie down
For we've danced a pretty measure of "The Sickle and the Plow".

        To the sickle and the plow me boys, let us raise our tankards high
        For before that he can live again John Barleycorn must die