G'day Ian,

I will post the Australian version of Shanty by the Way to a new thread: LYR ADD:Shanty by the Way, along with my ABC of the tune, as I know it as well as a collected version from Victoria. I will see if I can get over my setup's problems reading other peoples ABC from Mudcat and see how your tune compares with mine.

Shanty by the Way is an Australian song collected (post W.W.II) in New Zealand by Australian researcher Dr Percy Jones. He had it from a man who had learned it from two old gold diggers who, in turn, learned it from an Australian miner working on NZ's West Coast in the last century.

The song itself is a folk-processed version of a poem by E. J. Overbury - printed in the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser in the 1860s. Creswick and Clunes are towns in Victoria, just north of the Ballarat gold fields.

I was going to post another of Overbury's poems/songs The Springtime it Brings on the Shearing (folksong name) or The Wallaby Track (original poem name), but I see that is already in the Digital Tradion database.

Regards,

Bob Bolton