G'day All (and Alison),

Whew! The booklist didn't crash the system after all. I hope there are some books that interest Jon ... and that they are still in the stock cupboard (things are pretty quiet over the Christmas/New Year break).

Alison: I ran through all 6 tunes to Bush Girl' and realised that the SECOND tune is the well-known one in Sydney circles. The first form of Con Caston's tune is written in common time and everyone seems to slip over into 3/4, as in the Gary Shearston version of Con's tune, the second version is Chris's book. The common time version is remarkably similar, considering the time change.

I see that everyone else who has set the lyrics has used 3/4, so there must be some inherent 3/4 nature to Henry's words. I remember Chris, in a concert at Forbes about 20+ years back, saying that the different settings of Lawson lyrics often had a remarkable similarity - even to the point of harmonising with each other - suggesting that the lyrics themselves suggested their tunes.

I don't know that this is entirely true ... when I first 'wrote' a tune to Henry's 'Good Old Concertina' I played the tune back to my wife Patricia and asked what she thought. She replied "I always liked 'The Curly-headed Ploughboy' ... Oh well, back to the music pad! I think I did compose the tune under my name in the book.

On the question of "the best tune", after playing all tunes I would have to say they are all good - particularly Priscilla Herdman's -, but nearly 40 years of habit will keep me singing tune 2.

Regards,

Bob Bolton