Ten Thousand Miles Away

Ten Thousand Miles Away is a sea shanty whose writing and composition are attributed to Joseph B. Geoghegan.

The lyrics as given in The Scottish Students' Song Book of 1897 are as follows:

Refrain

Verse 2

Verse 3

Verse 4

Verse 5

In his Shanties from the Seven Seas Hugill says that this was originally a shore ballad sung by street singers in Ireland in the early nineteenth century. Later it became a popular music hall number.The Scottish Student's Song Book gives the author as "J. B. Geoghegan". This is Joseph Bryan Geoghegan (c. 1816 – 1889) who was manager of the Star and Museum Music Hall in Bolton, Lancashire

The song is numbered 1778 in the Roud Folk Song Index and it has been passed from singer to singer as a traditional shanty. The figure of "ten thousand miles" could well refer to the distance between England and Australia, and the separation of the lovers arises because the singer's lover has been transported. Several of the variant texts make this possibility more explicit. For example, the lyrics sung by Jon Boden have the lines

and the version given by Hugill and that sung by Tommy Makem have very similar lines

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