I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen

I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen

I'll take you home again,
Kathleen
Across the ocean
wild and wide

To where your heart
has ever been
Since first,
you were my bonny bride

The roses all have
left your cheek
I watch them fade
away and die

Your voice is soft
whenever you speak
And tears bedim your
lovely eye

Oh, I will take you home,
Kathleen
To where your heart
shall feel no pain

And when the fields are
soft and green
I will take you to your home,
Kathleen

I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" is a popular song written by Thomas P. Westendorf in 1875. In spite of its German-American origins, it is widely mistaken to be an Irish ballad. Westendorf, then teaching at the reform school known as the Indiana House of Refuge for Juvenile Offenders in Hendricks County, Indiana, wrote it – apparently – for his wife (who was, however, named Jennie). It's in the form of an "answer" to a popular ballad of the time, "Barney, Take Me Home Again," composed by Westendorf’s close friend, George W. Brown, writing under the nom de plume of George W. Persley.^[1][2]