The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #144911 Message #3351478
Posted By: Joe Offer
16-May-12 - 03:51 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: From the Lambing to the Wool (Judy Small)
Subject: ADD: From the Lambing to the Wool (Judy Small)
For the sake of completeness, here are the lyrics I posted in Thread #101283 Message #2041008 Posted By: Joe Offer 02-May-07 - 04:22 AM Thread Name: Folklore: Where did the 'Cockie.' Subject: ADD: From the Lambing to the Wool (Judy Small)
Hi, Phil - be sure to see the What's A Cockie/Cocky? thread. Eric Bogle uses the word in Now I'm Easy, using the word as an Australian term for "farmer."
I think Bok-Muir-Trickett recorded an Australian song that began "My father was a cocky..." - but I'm not finding that one, and my brain is too addled to find it without a proper search engine - but you will find the word in many songs at Mudcat.
My father was a cocky as his father was before him And I married me a cocky nearly fifty years ago And I've lived here on this station and I've seen the seasons changing From the drought round to the flooding, from the lambing to the wool
And there've been times when I've wondered If it all was worth the doing And there've been times when I've thought This was the finest place there is For though the life here's never easy And the hours are long and heavy I'm quite contented nowadays To have joined my life to his
Together through the thirties while others' lives were broken We worked from dawn to twilight to hold on to what was ours And at night we'd sit exhausted and I'd stroke his dusty forehead With him too tired to talk to me and me too tired to care CHORUS
Then the children came unbidden bringing laughter to the homestead And I thanked the Lord my sons were young, too young for battle then And I counted myself lucky to lose no-one close to family Though the neighbours lost their only son, sold up and moved to town CHORUS
And the children have grown and left me for careers in town and city And I'm proud of them but sadly for none chose station life And now I smile to hear them talking of the hard slog in the office For when I think of working hard I see a cocky and his wife CHORUS
Copied from the "My Songbook" Website, www.mysongbook.de - verified in the CD booklet from Judy Small's The Best of the 80s CD. The song is also on the Harbors of Home CD by Bok, Muir, and Trickett; and on the Darkness Into Light CD by Priscilla Herdman.
-Joe-
...also recorded by Jean Redpath on A Woman of Her Time.