John Meredith in his Book "Folk Songs of Australia and the Men and Women who sang them" collected from both a Arthur Buchanan and Fred Stoane, antidotial (sp?) evidence that Waltzing Matilda had been sung well before Banjo was meant to have written it.

One of things that everybody forgets about Banjo was that he was also a recorder and collector of Folk Songs around the same time he was meant to have written Waltzing Matilda, it is quite possible that he modified a song he had already collected and presented it as his own to Christina.

Banjo's Patterson published his collection in 1905 as "The Old Bush Songs Composed and Sung in the Bushranging, Digging and Overlanding Days"

Bruce D