Origins
The lyrics to When Johnny Comes Marching Home were written by the Irish-American bandleader Patrick Gilmore during the American Civil War. Its first sheet music publication was deposited in the Library of Congress on September 26, 1863, with words and music credited to "Louis Lambert"; copyright was retained by the publisher, Henry Tolman & Co., of Boston. Why Gilmore chose to publish under a pseudonym is not clear, but popular composers of the period often employed pseudonyms to add a touch of romantic mystery to their compositions. Gilmore is said to have written the song for his sister Annie as she prayed for the safe return of her fiancé, Union Light Artillery Captain John O'Rourke, from the Civil War, although it is not clear if the engagement already existed in 1863 and the two were not married until 1875.
Gilmore later acknowledged that the music was not original but was, as he put it in an 1883 article in the Musical Herald, "a musical waif which I happened to hear somebody humming in the early days of the rebellion, and taking a fancy to it, wrote it down, dressed it up, gave it a name, and rhymed it into usefulness for a special purpose suited to the times."
The melody was previously published around July 1, 1863, as the music to the Civil War drinking song Johnny Fill Up the Bowl. A color-illustrated, undated slip of Gilmore's lyrics, printed by his own Boston publisher, actually states that When Johnny Comes Marching Home should be sung to the tune of Johnny Fill Up the Bowl. The original sheet music for Johnny Fill Up the Bowl states that the music was arranged (not composed) by J. Durnal. There is a melodic resemblance of the tune to that of John Anderson, My Jo (to which Robert Burns wrote lyrics to fit a pre-existing tune dating from about 1630 or earlier), and some have suggested a connection to the seventeenth-century ballad The Three Ravens.
When Johnny Comes Marching Home is also sung to the same tune as Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye and is frequently thought to have been a rewriting of that song. However, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye was not written until 1867, and it originally had a different melody.
When Johnny Comes Marching Home was immensely popular and was sung by both sides of the American Civil War. It became a hit in England as well.
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