Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier" is the American branch of a lament the Traditional Ballad Index files under "Shule Agra" (Roud 911): a young woman grieves for a lover who has gone to France as a soldier, vowing to sell her spinning wheel to fit him out and to dye her clothing red until he comes home.[1] The Index treats the Irish "Shule Aroon" forms and American titles such as "Buttermilk Hill" as one song, reported from Ireland, Britain, Canada and much of the United States.[1] An unsigned note in the Index questions how much of the song first existed in Irish, its writer reporting that he has never heard a genuinely traditional Gaelic verse and calling the usual chorus "a mangled imitation of Gaelic."[1] P. W. Joyce linked the song to the "Wild Geese," the young Irishmen who left between 1691 and 1745 to serve in Continental, mostly French, armies.[2] Rod Stradling's notes, reprinted on Mainly Norfolk, call Joyce's dating unsupported, though they hold that the song is older still, going back at least to the mid-1600s; sources differ on its age.[3]

Woodcut of a woman seated at a spinning wheel

Jean-François Millet, The Spinner, woodcut, 1853. A woman at her spinning wheel, shown for the wheel in the song; it has no connection to the song.

The written trail starts in the 1820s: two verses that seem to belong to it turn up in Sir Walter Scott's correspondence of 1823 and in print the following year, and Thomas Moore set a poem of his own to the "Shule Aroon" air in 1824.[1] P. M. Haverty included the air in his One Hundred Irish Airs in 1858.[2] On the American side, the Library Company of Philadelphia holds several variant song sheets titled "Johnny Is Gone for a Soldier," from a collection dated 1850 to 1870, one of them published by James D. Gay of Philadelphia.[4] The Ballad Index gives 1876 as its earliest date, citing that year's edition of Henry Randall Waite's Carmina Collegensia.[1] The song is often tied to the American Revolution: the Tune Archive traces Peter, Paul and Mary's American version to that era, and Siobhan Miller and Jeana Leslie's album notes call it a Revolutionary War song, while Barbara Snape's notes suggest it reached America during the Civil War.[2][3] The dated evidence in the sources consulted here begins in the nineteenth century, so the Revolutionary War story is best taken as tradition rather than established history.[1][4]

Singers on both sides of the Atlantic have kept it alive, from Cecilia Costello and Elizabeth Cronin, recorded in the 1950s, to Isla Cameron in 1966 and Natalie Merchant with the Kronos Quartet in 2017.[3] Maureen Sellers includes it, as "Johnny Is Gone For A Soldier," in Songs Of The Civil War, a 22-page Appalachian dulcimer book from Fingers Of Steel that gathers songs popular during the American Civil War, all in DAD tuning.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Shule Agra (Shool Aroo[n], Buttermilk Hill, Johnny's Gone for a Soldier)".
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Shule Aroon (2)".
  3. Mainly Norfolk: "Shule Agra / Johnny Is Gone for a Soldier".
  4. Library Company of Philadelphia: "Johnny Is Gone for a Soldier".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Songs Of The Civil War".
  6. Image: Jean-François Millet, The Spinner, woodcut, 1853. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song