Eureka stockade 150 years old (songs about)

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: GUEST,CeeJay
Date: 04 Dec 04 - 09:29 PM

Surely accusing the miners at Eureka of being racist is a bit of an anachronism? Society at large in those days was incredibly racist in comparison to our own still less than perfect time. You have only to go to the archives of any newspaper of the 1850s to see that.

Perhaps its true that the Irish miners were just out to 'have a go' at the hated English, and not all that interested in democracy or liberty, but then it would have to be conceded that Irish experience of obtaining justice from the imperial power was probably different to that of other colonists from more favoured parts of the United Kingdom. Could it be that the Victorian colonial parliament of the day, controlled as it was by large landholders and elected on a property franchise, were reluctant to grant democracy to the miners because so many of them were 'Irish riff raff'and dubious types from other countries? Was Eureka then, one more instance of the Irish, having apparently no choice but to be part of Britain's empire, showing their determination to not accept second class status within it?

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 06:19 AM

Well since the Thoroughbred English Gentlemen' were behaving like arrogant powermad thugs, any reasonable low class person on the receiving end would have not liked them very much....

Peter Hicks led off the 3 am lantern parade - the organisers had asked him to be the 'leading light' this year....


I'll get me coat...

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: Joybell
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 07:38 PM

Ceejay, My ancestors were Cornish, English and Irish. All were diggers, wives of diggers, children of diggers. All were poor. The Cornish ones had been poor miners before they came to Australia. They all settled in the (then)tent city of Bendigo (near Ballarat) In researching my family history, which includes reading old newspappers and diaries I've not found any sort of focus (racist or otherwise) directed particularly towards the Irish, of the type you describe.

The other point to note is that the proportion of Irish on the Central Victorian goldfields was relatively small. (actually as it was elsewhere). We've been told otherwise I know, but the facts are that it was much easier, quicker and cheaper to get to America from Ireland.
Just why I'm arguing about not letting the Irish have Eureka, I can't imagine. It's just that I dislike the rewrting of history. Cheers Joy

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: GUEST,CeeJay
Date: 05 Dec 04 - 08:30 PM

I find it difficult to follow your argument, Joybell, as you continually refer to sources without naming any of them. I don't think I argued that racism in 19th century society was directed at one particular group.

My own view of Eureka is that the miners in general were incensed at the various restrictions on them by government, particularly the licence fee and the manner of its collection, but the majority could not bring themselves to outright armed confrontation with the authorities. Probably the traditions which they had brought with them to Ballarat from their various countries of origin played a big part in this. We know that many were British, American and Canadian and there was a fair admixture of nationals from European countries which had recently undergone revolutions or had 'liberalising' movements. Interestingly, it was the Americans, a people with a tradition of armed rebellion against 'lawful authority', who formed the best armed detachment among the more militant miners but they seem to have been either conned or otherwise persuaded to absent themselves on the crucial morning. So it was the Irish who formed the core of that militant group which stayed inside the stockade and provided the 'blood sacrifice' that has perpetuated the name of 'Eureka'. Note that I say 'the core', I do not claim that the Irish were the only ones to stay put, nor even that they were the majority of that group, but that they gave it its impetus.

Peter Lalor's older brother, James Fintan Lalor was a revolutionary in Ireland and famously declared, 'the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland'. Although Peter was quite a lot younger we may well imagine that revolutionary ideals were familiar to him as a young man of education. Thus however reluctantly it is said that he mounted the stump, once up there he addressed the meeting in terms of what he believed to be right. Nothing he said was likely to have been objectionable to the great majority of those present, among whom were Chartists, Communarians and others who had in their recent lives experienced the European 'Year of Revolutions' of 1848. Certainly he would have struck a chord with most of the Irish in his audience who would have had recent memories of the O'Connellite Home Rule movement and its breakaway 'Young Irelanders', as well as the Famine of 1845 - 1851. Along with these may have been a leavening of the 'larrikin' element who are always ready to stoke the fires of civil disorder for their own purposes, be they nefarious or merely a need for excitement.

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: GUEST,shirin
Date: 08 May 06 - 04:18 AM

couls someone please do me a favour?? i am doing a high school assignment on the cross of the south and i really need a copy of the song. would you be kind enought to either, put the song on the site, tell me what site i can get it from, or post a reply , and ill tell u my email
thank you so much,
shirin

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: John O'L
Date: 08 May 06 - 05:26 AM

The Cross of the South seems to be an American Civil War song.

Can't find anything relevant to Eureka I'm afraid.

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: Hrothgar
Date: 08 May 06 - 07:09 AM

See post 10.59 12 Mar 04

Cross of the South
Words by Kenneth Cook, Melody Traditional Irish

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old
From: John O'L
Date: 08 May 06 - 07:14 AM

My mistake. Powerful song it is too.

Subject: RE: Eureka stockade 150 years old (songs about)
From: mark gregory
Date: 21 Mar 12 - 10:43 PM

found this one today

... published in four local newspapers one of them twice ... is this
the first Eureka Poem Competition ?

The Broadford Courier and Reedy Creek Times Friday 27 April 1894 p.5
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58881092

Oakleigh Leader Saturday 28 April 1894 p.3
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66216171

The Caulfield and Elsternwick Leader Saturday 28 April 1894 p.3
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66877690

Queenscliff Sentinel, Drysdale, Portarlington & Sorrento Advertiser
Saturday 5 May 1894 p.2
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74273830

Queenscliff Sentinel, Drysdale, Portarlington & Sorrento Advertiser
Saturday 4 August 1894 p.2
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article74274365

EUREKA.
(By the Rev. T. J. Hyder. Awarded first prize in the Hibernian Society
competition for a poem on the subject).

Men came with hearts of hope and pitched their tents
Across the ranges of the trackless bush,
Driving the silence northward to the plains.
They wrought and wrested from the stubborn earth
Her stores of gold, smiling at Want and Care.
Then came stern faces frowning Freedom down
Commissioners with arbitrary powers,
And force to harry all the busy field
With licence-hunting, till black blood was made,
And men, treated like brutes, showed rage as brutes.
The savage natures stirred the milder up,
Revolting at the burden and the shame;
For it was open scandal to the Crown
That honest toil was forced to pay a fee
Exorbitant for right to earn its bread.
The law smote men upon the sweating face
With whips of scorpions. Were they wretched slaves
That brother men should shoot and fiercely hunt,
And ride them down with armed horse and force ?
The freeborn to produce a paper right
To that eternal right of man, his right
To liberty ! What freeborn man could stand
And suffer sabre blow, and bayonet thrust
Oppressing and coercing, without rage
And brave revolt ? To be downtrodden, cursed,
Pursued like beasts, and chained to trees and logs; -
Confined at tyrants' will—these were the wrongs
That made Eureka's bloody work, and tore
The shackled liberty of manhood free.
The diggers made no open breach, though men
Had torn down kingdoms for injustice less.
One day a boist'rous fellow in his cups
Demanded drink, and furious words ensued
At Bentley's, the Eureka Inn, ill-famed,
And Bentley cleft the man between the eyes,
Smiting him dead, himself not held to blame.
That gross collusion, murder bribing law,
Set fire to all the miners' honest hearts.
Then out there poured ten thousand angry men,
Who, at the Inn, broke through the long restraint,
Wreckt the vile den and gave it to the flames,
The murderer escaping for his life.
Then came injustice grosser still. Three men
Were seized and tried for rooting out the plague,
And prisoned. Swift remonstrance rose
To plead before stern Hotham ; but he drove
The deputies away with unwise words.
The diggers rose, and swore before Just God
To strike for Freedom. Licences were burnt,
And all Eureka burst into revolt.
Men, desperate, took arms ; and to conceal
The daily drill set up a frail stockade
About that sacred acre on the hill,
The Stockade of Eureka. A leader came,
A man of Celtic blood and honest hand,
And he, grown great for Freedom, never flinched
The awful call of Duty, but in love
Of glorious Liberty gave all his heart,
He, standing up before insulted man,
Thus nobly spoke ;—" I shall not shrink;
I mean
To do my duty as a man ; and once
I pledge my hand, I will defile it not
By treachery, nor by mean cowardice,
Render that hand contemptible."* Then he
Upreared the Southern Cross as Freedom's flag
Full eighty feet; and, rising dominant,
Swore those Five Hundred there beneath the flag
To stand and strike for Freedom. He himself
First reverent kneeling, swore in glowing words,
By that most sacred Standard, to defend
Their rights and liberties. Then thrilling rose
The loud " Amen," five hundred hands upstretched
Towards the Standard. But, like Gideon's host,
They dwindled down, till but a third stood round
Brave Lalor when the desperate fight began.
That '54 December opened fierce
With furnace heat; the night came on with storm
And sheets of rain; offended Heaven poured
The lightning down, and God's great power was seen
In awful light. Upon the second day
A demonstration in the silvery dawn
In force came menacing the Bakery Hill;
But like a threatening wave rolled back again.
Next day, the third, at dawn, a sentry fired
Upon the troops advancing : bugle-blasts
Rang out, and on the soldiers rushed with cheers,
Just twice the force within the mean Stockade,
With threatening horsemen as a grim support.
A furious fire began the deadly work.
Men fell in sudden death, while Lalor urged
The remnant into holes. The bayonet charge
Was on them. Lalor fell with shattered arm,
And loyal comrades hid him under slabs,
While shouting, swearing, in the redcoats swept,
Tearing the flimsy barrier down; and then
They smote to death the few who fought, and drove
The helpless rebels, overmatched, with blows
Into their camp, and tore the Standard down.
......................
Lalor, a price upon his life escaped.,
A one-armed man, and sheltered from the storm.
But men rose up throughout the land and forced
The bitter curse to cease, and pardon came,
And righteous laws proclaimed the Freedom found.
He who had led the right against the might
God set as legislator, crowning him
With strength and infinite esteem, and made
His wisdom power amidst the sons of men,
Till he was lifted up to rule them all.
Thus was Eureka lost and Freedom won.

*Lalor's own words.