Home! Sweet Home!

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This article is about the popular 19th century song. For other meanings, see Home, Sweet Home

"Home! Sweet Home!" (also known as "Home, Sweet Home") is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from the 1823 play Clari, Maid of Milan by American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne, the song was written in 1852 by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop. The opening lines

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;

are Payne's; most of the remaining words, and the melody, are Bishop's. It is also used with Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs.

This song is famous in Japan as "Hanyu no Yado" ("A Lodging"). It has been used in such movies as The Burmese Harp and Grave of the Fireflies and is also used at Senri-Chuo Station on the Kita-Osaka Kyuko Railway.

This song is also the tune that is played by a solo bagpipe at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina on two separate occasions only per academic year. Once on the night of 4th class indoctrination which precedes the Regimental Commander's speech to the incoming 4th class before the 4th class system goes into effect, and again on Recognition Day at the very end when the 4th class year. As with many things at the Citadel. traditionally the song is never written down on paper and is taught directly from the current Pipe Major to the rising Pipe Major and is never performed for any reason outside of those two instances.

[edit] Popular culture

Key phrases from the song have been a cultural staple for several generations.

Needlework portraits of a house with the phrase "Home Sweet Home" have long been an icon.
Hence parodies such as a cartoon caveman with "Cave Sweet Cave", or a corporate office worker with "Cubicle Sweet Cubicle"
The song's melody played in the underscore as Dorothy spoke of "No Place Like Home" near the end of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
Tom Lehrer's satire of the old southern United States finished with the line, "Be it ever so decadent, there's no place like home."