"I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" is a traditional pop song written by Thomas Paine Westendorf (1848–1923) in 1875. (The music is loosely based on Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor Opus 64 Second Movement). In spite of its German-American origins, it is widely mistaken to be an Irish ballad. Westendorf, born in Bowling Green, Virginia of German parents, was then teaching at the reform school known as the Indiana House of Refuge for Juvenile Offenders in Hendricks County, Indiana. He wrote it for his wife (who was, however, named Jane Harrow), who had made a visit to her home state of New York due to homesickness. It is an answer song 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.

Recorded versions

Popular culture