Talk:When Johnny Comes Marching Home

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Untitled[edit]

When we were kids, we used to laugh at the line "And we'll all feel gay" right before "When Johnny comes marching home". It appears that someone has vandalized the page, and removed that line. I'm adding it back. And "Gay" in this sense means "Glad".

The Clash's song "English Civil War" used the melody of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", and incorporated the first line:

"When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, ta dah, He's coming by bus or underground, hurrah, ta dah"

Original sheet music (1863) gives credit for words and music to Louis Lambert. -AlvinMGO 23:24, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This was apparently a pseudonym JQ 07:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I grew up in Clarksburg, WV, just south of the Mason-Dixon line. Most of the elders in our area could tell you stories about their families having brothers who fought on either side of this war. My grandfather, (born in 1897), told me how his father described bathing in a river at night and calling out to the other side, "I have a brother in (such and such battalion), can you please tell me anything you know?" I was taught by my church choir director that this song also was used as a war protest song during the Civil War. The words I can remember are: "He has no arms, He has no legs, hurray, hurrah." Then there was a comment about "how can he dance with me...hurray, hurrah." If anyone knows anything about this version, I would love to hear about its history. (Valerie H. Brand-Ranagan--7/18/2013.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.116.149 (talk) 03:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I grew up in Clarksburg, WV, just south of the Mason-Dixon line. Most of the elders in our area could tell you stories about their families having brothers who fought on either side of this war. My grandfather, (born in 1897), told me how his father described bathing in a river at night and calling out to the other side, "I have a brother in (such and such battalion), can you please tell me anything you know?" I was taught by my church choir director that this song also was used as a war protest song during the Civil War. The words I can remember are: "He has no arms, He has no legs, hurray, hurrah." Then there was a comment about "how can he dance with me...hurray, hurrah." If anyone knows anything about this version, I would love to hear about its history. (Valerie H. Brand-Ranagan--7/18/2013. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.116.149 (talk) 03:29, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Technically, Talk pages are not intended as vehicles for general queries like this but rather as a forum where improvements and edits to the article can be discussed. However - your query can be answered briefly. Your great-grandfather was remembering the Irish version of the song, which has a Wikipedia article on it, Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye. There is an active discussion there and in the real world about which song gave rise to the other - which is the older of the two. The jury is still out on that. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 04:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is Buttermilk Hill/Johnny's Gone for a Soldier related to WJCMH? There are some places that say WJCMH is a "sequel" of sorts to Johnny's Gone. Percy Hall's website has them grouped into a single presentation, called "Johnny's a Soldier". --2ltben 13:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

the entry's author didn't remember to mention Morton Gould's "American Salute"... 83.29.63.141 (talk) 16:57, 11 December 2007 (UTC) joanda[reply]

Unsourced[edit]

However, expert James Fuld, author of the standard text on popular music, The Book of World Famous Music, states on page 640 of that volume that Donal O'Sullivan, the Irish authority, has written the Library of Congress that he does not consider the melody of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" as Irish in origin. As stated, no printed music of Irish origin has been discovered that predates American publication in September of 1863 by Henry Tolman in Boston under the title "When Johnny Comes Marching Home". Library of Congress records do show a title "Johnny Fill Up The Bowl" that was published in July of 1863 by John J. Daly that appears to contain the song's melody.

Since when was "Irish Authority" a respected or bona fide title -- this has all the credibility of some bloke down the pub that reads lots of books on Irish music. If this person is a genuine academic then publish a source. You might then also rewrite the whole article because it's a mess.

100% pure Wikiality. 

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.129.162 (talk) 19:49, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, if you look at the Wiki page for "Johnny we Hardly Knew Ye", it claims that it is the melody basis for WJCMH with a quote attributed to Gilmore himself. This needs to be more consistent. 125.238.14.18 (talk) 23:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, totally irrespective of the reality of the situation, this section simply reads like some butt-hurt American is trying his best to downplay the fact that the melody of one of America's most famous historical songs isn't even American in origin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.8.131.151 (talk) 12:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Ants Go Marching[edit]

The link for "The Ants Go Marching One By One" says, "By Robert D. Singleton 'The Ants Go Marching' is a children's song that first appeared in Barney's Campfire Sing Along (1990)." But I had it on a record in the 1970s when I was little, and the lyrics were slightly different. Instead of, "And they all start marching down to the ground / To get out of the rain, BOOM BOOM BOOM.", it was, "And they all start marching / To the end / Of the Earth / To get out / Of the rain." I don't remember what the record was and I don't have it anymore. Does anyone else remember this? Sluggoster (talk) 18:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have to second this motion. I know "The Ants Go Marching One By One" predates Barney's version. We used to sing this song as kids at camp, back in the early to mid 80s. What I was hoping to find (and am still hoping for) is a Wiki entry for "The Ants Go Marching One By One" -- I would love to know the origins/history of that song. Jdevola (talk) 20:03, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I sang this song at different camps growing up in the early 1960's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100C:B2BB:514E:B11F:41F5:4C7:F8EC (talk) 01:59, 30 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Similarity to "On Springfield Mountain"[edit]

Some performances I've seen of "On Springfield Mountain" are sung to a melody that's fairly similar. For example: http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/?p=6974 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vELGVnPt_Pc

On the other hand, other performances use some very different melodies. Anyone know what the deal is there?

Esn (talk) 03:03, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relationship to Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye[edit]

A recent monograph on Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye shows that When Johnny Comes Marching Home clearly was the earlier song. I've added the reference, and I'll try to say something in the article at some point. Since the present article assumes the primacy of Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, it will be necessary to rewrite pretty much the entire Origins section. John M Baker (talk) 04:43, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home was taken from Johnny Fill Up the Bowl, of which For Bales, discussed in the article, was a later variant. Lighter suggests that the tune derives ultimately from The Three Ravens. John M Baker (talk) 04:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let's slow down a minute. What is this monograph? Who is the author and what are his/her credentials? Is it a RS? Has it been vetted in the academy? A single source purporting to provide a definitive answer to an historically obscure origin needs to be approached with caution. There are plenty of monographs on plenty of subjects that are so speculative and inferential as to be useless as actual evidence. Lighter's areas of expertise appear to be slang and etymology - not folklore. This needs a closer look.Sensei48 (talk) 07:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it looks pretty RS to me. The author is Jonathan Lighter, a professor of English and the editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. He's an expert on the use of sources in tracing historical origins, which is the part of folklore we care about for present purposes. Lighter traces the historical origins of both Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye and When Johnny Comes Marching Home in considerable detail, with an examination of original sources that doesn't seem to have occurred before. John M Baker (talk) 12:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the prompt and measured response. I don't have the monograph, though I see that it's available through B&N. I'd like to take a look at it myself just for interest's sake - and to see what the critical response to it has been. I'd also like to re-examine sources asserting the opposite and look for some others.
My caution stems from a number of cases here on Wikipedia in other articles, two of which might be worth brief mention. A few years back, one Les Standiford published a book called The Man Who Invented Christmas about A Christmas Carol. Standiford asserts that the holiday was "dying" and/or little-celebrated until the Dickens novella revived it. An editor rewrote the Carol article nearly in its entirety based on Standiford's book, which is speculative and problematic in many ways (and this is an area in which I have some professional expertise and several decades of work). Standiford is an academic - a professor of creative writing, not philology or literary research - and the book itself was not offered as a scholarly treatise but rather as a popular essay. The consequence for the article on Wikipedia has been that it has been necessary continually to keep the article balanced and representative of different perspectives on the issues.
Ditto Battle of the Little Bighorn following the publication of Gregory Michno's Lakota Noon, a reconstruction of the battle using previously-ignored Native American accounts. An editor rewrote the article using the often-conflicting native accounts as the base narrative - and there had already been a century of academic scholarship on the battle that advanced a very large number of other and often contradictory theories. Again, the integrity of the article was negatively impacted by reliance on one source as primary.
Might I suggest that rather than rewrite the whole Origins section - for the moment at least - that the Lighter material be introduced as a new or contemporary or recent theory? Let's see what the academic and/or critical response to Lighter's monograph might be and perhaps offer more detailed evidence supporting conflicting theories. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 16:04, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A quick look at recent works includes an assertion by Alan Bewell that "Johnny I Hardly Knew ye" dates from the 1760s. Bewell is chair of the English department at the U. of Toronto and his point appears in a book published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Those are heavy-duty academic credentials - which I offer here only in support of a balanced approach to introducing the Lighter material into the article. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your position. I've experienced something of the kind myself with jazz (word). A writer named Daniel Cassidy wrote a book, How the Irish Invented Slang, in which he posited that "jazz" derives from the Irish (Celtic) word "teas," or heat (which, according to Cassidy, is pronounced "jazz" in some dialects). Now, How the Irish Invented Slang is pretty much the antithesis of RS. Cassidy knew nothing of linguistic research, used discredited methods, sought to reach a previously determined conclusion, and considered it a virtue that both his methods and his conclusions were contrary to established linguistics. Also, he did not speak Irish. However, one of his followers (strongly suspected to be Cassidy himself) pushed his theory very hard.
This is a very different case. Lighter is a prominent legitimate academic with extensive experience in tracing literary origins. The monograph itself is well-researched and thoroughly documented, with extensive quotations from source materials. I found it quite convincing. (Incidentally, I would recommend it to you; I looked at your user page, and it seems likely that you would like it very much. I read it through twice myself.)
And, as far as I can tell, this isn't so much a rival theory as the only theory with genuine research. For example, I looked at the work by Bewell (this, I assume). There is no support indicated there for "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye" being an anonymous Irish street ballad of the 1760s. Is there in his source, Tillotson, Eighteenth Century English Literature? The relevant page of Tillotson is unavailable online, but it's hard to see how a war with Ceylon in the early 1800s could have given rise to an Irish street ballad in the 1760s. Mostly the claims of an early Irish origin seem to be based on loosely read internal evidence, with no actual resort to the sources.
I would be happy to stand corrected, and maybe there's more real research on When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which after all is a better-known song. But I'm not seeing it in the sources cited in the article at present. John M Baker (talk) 00:11, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Right. There are tantalizing allusions to Tillotson, the Hazen anthology, and a supposed 19th century source with a remark from Gilmore himself ascribing the melody to "Hardly Knew Ye," but these are all elusive. The Tillotson book is I believe long out of print and available only in libraries, but I'll poke around and see if I can find anything of value. I'd be happy to see you do the proposed rewrite (as I note you've done already and carefully with the Wiki "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye"), and if I find anything more substantial than the oblique comment from Bewell I'll let you know and maybe sandbox any revision that seems warranted.
Your experience with "jazz" is both cautionary and amusing - and all too typical of what gets used as sourcing here on Wikipedia, as if the mere fact that a theory is published automatically renders it reliable. That's one of the problems with working the Standiford material into the Christmas Carol article without letting it dominate - he raises some useful points and his book in its entirety allows for points of view different from his own, but his basic thesis is not widely accepted in the academy.
The issue here with "Johnny" reminds me of issues I've had with the article on another Irish tune, "The Whistling Gypsy Rover." The song was indeed copyrighted in 1950 by Irish entertainer Leo Maguuire, and die-hard purist folk music types have derided it as a sentimental rewrite of the more august Child ballad #200,"The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy" with all the variant titles - and that's the story that characterizes the Wiki article. Trouble is, when the tune became popular in the U.S. right after 1960, my Irish-born grandmother (1893) who had lived since she was 7 in the U.S. knew most of the words and the chorus and said that she sang it as a little girl. Courtesy of the internet, online folklore collections, a university library, and some monographs, I've located perhaps 20 variants of the song published decades before Maguire and going back as far as 1888 - variants that resemble this song in tune (closely), chorus (which "Wraggle-Taggle"-"Gypsy Laddie" etc. do not have), and plot. I can't insert this into the article yet, though, because it constitutes synthesis and original research, which we all agree is a no-no here on Wikipedia. I'll have to wait for a monograph like Lighter's - or maybe write one myself. regards, Sensei48 (talk) 04:21, 29 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've rewritten the article to incorporate Lighter's scholarship. I considered replacing the For Bales lyrics with the original lyrics to Johnny Fill Up the Bowl, but ended up trying to minimize changes to that section. The Origins section, of course, got a complete rewrite. With these additional references, I felt comfortable removing the Refimprove flag.
It sounds like you need to make your own contribution to scholarship with The Whistling Gypsy Rover. If you ever do, let me know on my talk page - I'd be interested. John M Baker (talk) 17:55, 1 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stone wine[edit]

Does the stone wine in the song reference Würzburger Stein wines (Steinwein)? Or just the stoneware? Just a question. J. D. Redding 13:01, 12 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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The Runaway Train, Animals Two By Two[edit]

Here in the UK, there are two VERY well-known children's variants on this melody, often sung in a major key but unmistakably owing to this source melody. On Wikipedia, The Runaway Train has only a passing mention on a disambiguation page, and I didn't find The Animals Went In Two By Two. I think it's apt to cite both of these on this very page, and I think the British popular consciousness would so immediately agree (look online for children's song pages/recordings to verify this). However, I'm not confidently Wikipedian, and would not know how to source something as colloquial as a children's culture song. 2.103.211.132 (talk) 18:46, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Film reference[edit]

Used in a dance scene in the film Stalag 17 86.9.117.8 (talk) 18:49, 8 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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