Henry's Songbook

Chorus:
With your guns and drums and drums and guns, huroo huroo (2x)
With your guns and drums and drums and guns
The enemy nearly slew you
My darlin' dear you look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew you

While on the road to sweet Athy, huroo huroo (2x)
While on the road to sweet Athy
A stick to my hand, a tear to my eye
A doleful damsel I heard cry
Johnny I hardly knew you

Where are the eyes that looked so mild, huroo huroo (2x)
Where are the eyes that looked so mild
When my poor heart you first beguiled
Why did you skedaddle from me and the child
Johnny I hardly knew you

Where are the legs that used to run, huroo huroo (2x)
Where are the legs that used to run
When first you went to follow the gun
Indeed your dancing days are done
Johnny I hardly knew you

You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg, huroo huroo (2x)
You haven't an arm, you haven't a leg
You're an eyeless boneless chickenless egg
You'll have to be put with a bowl to beg
Johnny I hardly knew you

They're rolling out the guns again, huroo huroo (2x)
They're rolling out the guns again
To go to war in France and Spain
They never shall have our sons again
Johnny I'm swearing to you

(as sung by Hamish Imlach)

[1973:] To the folk there are wars - and wars. This minor mode anti-war song was put into a major scale and turned into a recruiting song, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, during the American War of Independence. I remember Glenn Miller and the Modernaires doing it during World War II. Frankly, I prefer the anti-war version, with its heroine a close cousin to Mrs. McGrath in her determination to change things. (Dallas, Wars 111)

[1979:] [This is] one of the few realistic songs about the ravages and sickness of war. (Loesberg II, 64)
Music attributed to Patrick Gilmore. In the anonymous poem of the same title, the reference to Ceylon (Sulloon) dates it to the early 19th century when a lot of Irishmen fought for the British to protect the East India Company. (Loesberg II, 68)

[1984:] But on this day I couldn't take my mind off the letter [that had come for fourteen-year-old Brendan Behan], so I opened it on the way home. Maybe that's something a mother should never do, but I did it, and when I read the letter I burst into tears. It was about Brendan going to Spain, to fight in the Civil War. It instructed him to meet a gentleman that was to take him there. I tore that letter up. Brendan didn't find out until some years later, but when he did he never forgave me. Some of the family say I did the wrong thing to this day. He was already a man, they say; it should have been his decision, and he might have come back from the war a different Brendan. Yes, I say, but he might have come back no Brendan at all. You know the old song that my brother wrote: [see above]. Peadar [Kearney] wrote that about the First World War, but it sums up any woman's feelings about her menfolk going off to any foreign war. (Kathleen Behan, Mother of all the Behans 95f)

http://kildare.local.ie/athy/