Ten Thousand Miles Away
song
"Ten Thousand Miles Away" (Roud 1778) is a sea shanty and bush ballad whose writing and composition are attributed to J. B. Geoghegan.
Origins and variants
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
Oh dark and dismal was the day When last I saw my Meg,
She'd a Government band around each hand And another one around the leg.
and the version given by Hugill and that sung by Tommy Makem have very similar lines.
The public source identifies “Ten Thousand Miles Away” as song. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Thousand, Miles and Away.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Ten Thousand Miles Away”, the useful work is to connect “song” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19075607. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1778, 1816 and 1889.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Ten Thousand Miles Away” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.