"Show Me the Way to Go Home" is a popular song written in 1925 by the English songwriting team Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly, using the pseudonym "Irving King". The song is said to have been written on a train journey from London by Campbell and Connelly. They were tired from the traveling and had a few alcoholic drinks during the journey, hence the lyrics. The song is in common use in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and North America.
Publication
The music and lyrics were written in 1925 by Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly. They self-published the sheet music and it became their first big success, selling 2 million copies and providing the financial basis of their publishing firm, Campbell, Connelly & Co. Campbell and Connelly published the sheet music and recorded the song under the pseudonym "Irving King".
The song was recorded by several artists in the 1920s. The first recordings, in 1925, were by Hal Swain's New Princes' Toronto Band – a group of Canadian musicians working in London – and by American-born male impersonator Ella Shields, in both cases for the Columbia label in London. Other recordings were made by radio personalities The Happiness Boys, Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra, and the California Ramblers. Throughout the twentieth into the twenty-first century it has been recorded by numerous artists.
Lyrics
Show me the way to go home, I'm tired and I want to go to bed, I had a little drink about an hour ago, And it's gone right to my head, Wherever I may roam, On land or sea or foam, You will always hear me singing this song, Show me the way to go home.
Parodies
Parodies popular on Midwest American campuses in the 1950s went:
Indicate the way to my abode
I'm fatigued and I want to retire
I imbibed a few about sixty minutes ago
And it percolated right through my cerebellum
Wherever I may perambulate
O'er land or sea or atmospheric vapor
You will always hear me rendering this melody
Indicate the way to my abode
or
Indicate the way to my abode
I'm fatigued and I wish to retire
I had a spot of beverage sixty minutes ago
And its risen right up to my cranium
No matter wherever I may perambulate
On land or sea or atmospheric vapour
You can always hear me chanting the melody
Indicate the way to my abode
Some similar versions substitute "terra firma" for land and/or "aqueous precipitate" for foam.
Literature
George Orwell references the song in his 1934 novel Burmese Days. Norman Mailer's 1948 novel The Naked and the Dead references the song several times. Brick, a main character of the Tennessee Williams 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, sings this song toward the end while drinking liquor, leaving out the line "And it's gone right to my head" and the last two lines due to dialogue between other characters. In Truman Capote's 1956 short story "A Christmas Memory", Miss Sook sings a line from the song. Albert Wendt references the song, slightly and purposefully revising it in his first novel, Sons For the Return Home (1973). In Terry Pratchett's 1995 novel Maskerade, the witches hear this song being sung by a neighbour taking an evening bath, and are surprised when he switches from English to Italian when he thinks he is being overheard. When he believes the coast is clear, he switches back to English. In Buddhadeb Guha's novel Ektu Ushnatar Jonye, a character named Pat Glaskin is found to sing this song at the end of the novel. The singing of this song by Pat Glaskin has been referred to by the author himself in his Rijuda story Rijudar songe Mccluskiegunje. Here, Rijuda is found to be singing the song after having dinner and drinks with a foreign married couple in Mccluskiegunj.