When Johnny Comes Marching Home

An exciting arrangement by Sandra Dackow that students will love to play that remains in first position with strong eighth-note passages and great parts for all. This piece appears in the 1800s and is embraced as traditional folk music by both Ireland and the United States, where it is popularly known as When Johnny Comes Marching Home. The original words “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” are sung by the song’s narrator, a young Irish woman who watched her loved one run away to soldier in a war far away. When he finally does return home to her and his child, he is broken, but she still takes him in and loves him. In more recent times the song has become, in some ways, an anti-war anthem. The American words of the song were popular with both the Confederate and Union Armies during the US Civil War. (1:30)