Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye

The Story Behind The Song

It doesn’t require any stretch of the imagination to say that Joseph Bryan Geoghegan – generally accepted as the writer of ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’ – was an extraordinary character. Joseph was the son of James Geoghegan, from Dublin, who earned his living as a Fustian Cutter – an arcane trade that was part of the business of manufacturing fabrics and which required a special skill with an industrial knife. James emigrated to England, living in the greater Manchester area, where he started a family with his wife Mary Anne (Reeves). They lived in Barton-upon-Irwell, in Salford, where Joseph Bryan Geoghegan was born.

Legend has it that he started to write songs “upon current events" when he was still in school. Joseph went on to become a well-known singer, songwriter, music hall performer and theatre manager. While conclusively establishing the authorship of songs from the 19th Century can be a thorny exercise, in addition to ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’, first published in 1867, Joseph Geoghegan has been credited with writing ‘Pat Works On The Railway’ aka ‘Paddy Works On The Railway’ (1854), which is still an Irish folk music staple; ‘John Barleycorn Is A Hero Bold’ (1860); ‘Down In A Coal Mine (1873); and ‘Cockles and Mussels’ (1876), among a list of over 60 known works. He wrote, according to an account on folksongandmusichall.com, for some of the most successful Music Hall artistes of the 1860s, 70s and 80s, including Harry Liston, Sam Torr, JW Rowley and George Leybourne in the UK and Tony Pastor in the United States.

How he found time to get the writing done, no one will ever know! Joseph was married in 1834, at the age of 18, to Elizabeth Hopwood (a 'vocalist'). However, he seems to have led an extraordinary double life, beginning a love affair in 1852 with a woman by the name of Mary Anne Birchall (a ‘vocalist’), who at 17 was less than half his age. Both women gave birth to children of which he was the father in that same year, and he carried on, in effect, with two growing families. There are different estimates as to the number of children he sired, the highest figure being 21: nine with Elizabeth and twelve with Mary Anne. Sadly, a number of his children were deaf and dumb. His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1871 and he immediately married Mary Anne: they lived together till January 1889, when Joseph himself died. Mary Anne followed him to the grave later that same year.

In between, Joseph Bryan Geoghegan had led a fantastically peripatetic lifestyle, apparently living at different times in Preston, Manchester, Liverpool, Salford, Bolton, Sheffield, Aldershot, Bradford, Hull, Stoke and again in Bolton (not necessarily in that order!). He also travelled widely to perform, often appearing on the same bills as his second wife, who was also a performer. But it is through his songs, most notably ‘Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye’, that his legend lives on.

Again, there is some dispute as to the genesis of this extraordinary work. The first song sung to the familiar tune may have been ‘Johnny Fill Up The Bowl’, a drinking song credited to John J. Daly from 1863, that was popular during the American civil war – though it is sometimes also referred to as a ‘sea shanty’. That melody was used by the Irishman, and US soldier, Patrick Gilmore, when he wrote ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’, the famous American civil war song, also first published in 1863.

The assumption had been that ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’ was an answer to – or a stark rebuttal of – the sentimental picture of a soldier returning to a hero’s welcome, painted in Gilmore’s rather jingoistic song. That may indeed have been the case, with Geoghegan’s later lyric intended as a blackly humorous send-up of Gilmore’s. However, the anti-war song originally had a different melody, only later achieving the musical equivalent of a ‘river capture’, taking over the better-known melody and ultimately attaining a greater significance than its host, as a genuine, unflinching work of gritty, popular art.

There is no denying this: ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’ is scaldingly explicit in detailing the ravages inflicted by war. After an introductory verse, the lyrics become a monologue, delivered by an Irish woman, who meets her former lover, and the father of her child, on the road to Athy, in Co. Kildare, Ireland. He, it turns out, had disappeared off to fight for the British in Ceylon – and, arriving back home, is in a terrible state of dereliction.

“Where are the eyes that looked so mild,” she asks, before the line designed for communal singing, kicks in, “Hurroo Hurroo/ Where are the eyes that looked so mild/ Hurroo Hurroo/ Where are the eyes that looked so mild/ When my poor heart you first beguiled/ Why did ya run from me and the child/ Johnny I hardly knew ya.”

The imagery in the song becomes ever more graphic as the narrator realises the enormity of what has happened to her lover, until the whole enterprise becomes overpoweringly stark and shocking.

“You hadn’t an arm, you hadn’t a leg, Hurroo Hurroo,” she says baldly, enunciating the line three times before she piles on the agony. “You’re a spineless, boneless, chicken-less egg/ You’ll have to be put with a bowl to beg/ Johnny I hardly knew ye.” Sung in a direct emotional style, it paints a harrowing, brutal picture of the likely impact of war on the plain people who are sent out to become cannon fodder.

‘Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye’ was revived first in 1959 by the Irish folk singer Tommy Makem and then by the group he joined, The Clancy Brothers (and Tommy Makem), whose version brought it to global attention in 1961. It has since been recorded by scores of performers, including Maureen O’Hara, the Irish Rovers, Mary Black, Karan Casey, Dropkick Murphys, Steeleye Span, Joan Baez and Janis Ian, among many more. It has also infiltrated popular culture on a different level entirely, with the melody featuring in an episode of The Simpsons and in the whistling intro to Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Civil War (song)’ (1991); the lyrics being re-purposed for ‘English Civil War’ by The Clash (1978), The Cranberries’ biggest hit ‘Zombie’ (1994) – which has achieved over 1 billion streams on YouTube alone – and in PJ Harvey’s powerful ‘Let England Shake’ (2011); and the title having been used and abused by leading feminist writers Edna O’Brien (Johnny I Hardly Knew You, 1977) and Germaine Greer (Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, 1969).