HOME, SWEET HOME
Laura and Mary did not say anything because they were
very tired, and Ma sat silently holding Baby Carrie, sleeping in
her arms. But Pa sang softly...
-- Little House in the Big Woods, Chapter 9,
"Going to Town"
'I have missed this,' he said, looking around at them
all.... Then he played and they all sang with him... --On the Banks
of Plum Creek, Chapter 30, "Going to Town"
And, as she fell asleep still thinking of violets and
fairy rings and moonlight over the wide, wide land, where their
very own homestead lay, Pa and the fiddle were softly singing...
-- By the Shores of Silver Lake, Chapter 32, "Evening
Shadows Fall"
"Home, Sweet Home" was written and composed in 1823 for the operetta "Clari, the Maid of Milan." The song was a collaboration by American John Howard Payne and Englishman Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, and it became what some believe to be the most popular song of the nineteenth century.
John Howard Payne (1791-1852) was born in New York and debuted as an actor in 1909; among his accomplishments was that he was the first American to play Shakespeare's Hamlet. He spent almost twenty years in Europe as an actor and playwright. Payne is most remembered for "Home, Sweet Home." When his career stalled, friends got him appointed as American consul to Tunis, Africa. He died there in 1852.
Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855) was an English opera conductor, composer, and arranger. He was professor of music at Oxford University until his death. In 1842, Bishop became the first musician to be knighted.
"Home, Sweet Home" is one of the few songs Laura Ingalls Wilder used in multiple "Little House"® books, although it only appears at the end of the By the Shores of Silver Lake manuscript and not in any earlier ones. In her Pioneer Girl memoir, Wilder wrote that in the Big Woods, Laura knew that tune ("Home, Sweet Home") because "Pa had told her which one it was." Wilder had Pa sing the song in Little House in the Big Woods and in On the Banks of Plum Creek at night after the family has returned from trips to town. In By the Shores of Silver Lake, it is sung in celebration of moving to the shanty on the homestead claim.
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HOME SWEET HOME (by John Howard Payne, from the opera "Clari, the Maid of Milan"
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; A charm from the sky seems to halllow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain; Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again! The birds singing gayly, that come at my call-- Give me then -- and the peace of mind, dearer than all! Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!
I gaze on the moon as I tread the drear wild, And feel that my mother now thinks of her child, As she looks on that moon from our own cottage door Thro' the woodbine, whose fragrance shall cheer me no more. Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!
How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile, And the caress of a mother to soothe and beguile! Let others delight mid new pleasures to roam, But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of home. Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home!
To thee I'll return, overburdened with care; The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there; No more from that cottage again will I roam; Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home, oh, there's no place like home! |
HOME, SWEET HOME (from Little House in the Big Woods and On the Banks of Plum Creek)
Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
HOME, SWEET HOME ( from By the Shores of Silver Lake)
Home! Home! Sweet, sweet home, Be it ever so humble There is no place like home.
Use the navigation bar above to listen to "Home, Sweet Home" - midi sequence by Barry Taylor. If you do not see the midi player above, click HERE to listen.
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