G'day Mark,

Stan (died early 1960s) wrote The Rabbiter's Song in the 1930s. It refers to the Government attempt to persuade the unemployed to go out and make money from trapping rabbits, instead of applying for the dole (which required working for the Government anyway - usually on public works programmes ... sometimes of utility and value).

Of course, when a whole mob of unemployed city slickers started sending off rabbit skins to the Sydney or Melbourne markets ... the price dropped (the law of supply and demand) as well as a number of the skins arriving rotten due to poor preparation. Anyway, there wasn't much money to be made in the game and Stan, being the good Left-winger that he was, wrote a beaut song and, being the competent musician that he was, wrote his own tune to it.

I remember being involved in some correspondence with the late Alan Scott when I had published a variant (from West Australia) in Mulga Wire and this varied in a couple of notes ... but I loved the chording. Alan was indignant a said that "if Stan had wanted it sung that way, he would have wrote it that way!".

Anyway, I have just checked my MusicTime files and I have the originaL version there, so I have saved it to MIDI and converted to Alan's MIDIText format:

Regards,

Bob Bolton

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Click to play

ABC format:

X:1
T:
M:4/4
Q:1/4=100
K:C
d15/2d/2|eddBAG2D/2D/2|GABGED2D|GGGGGedB|
AGGAA3B/4B/2B/4|eddBAG2G/2G/2|GABGED2G/2G/2|
GGGGGedB|AGGAA5/2||