Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: GUEST,granny nanny
Date: 18 Jul 12 - 03:59 PM

The version I know is sung to the tune of the hymn, "The Church's one foundation." It sounds wondeerfully dainty.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOGS' PARTY
From: GUEST,stalterian
Date: 06 Jul 12 - 11:23 PM

As sung by Bob Gibson and 2 others at Charlotte's Web (a coffeehouse in Rockford, Illinois in about 1973). Beautiful 3-part harmony to The Church's One Foundation.

Some dogs had a party; they came from near and far.
And some dogs came by taxi, and some dogs came by car.
And each signed his name all in a little book.
And each dog hung his ___hole upon a separate hook.

One dog was not invited, and this aroused his ire.
He stormed into the party and loudly shouted, "Fire!"
The dogs got so excited; they didn't stop to look,
But grabbed the nearest ___hole from off the nearest hook.

Now this is a very sad story, for it is awfully sore
To wear another's ___hole you've never worn before.
And this is why, when dogs meet, no matter where they roam,
They sniff each other's ___hole, in hopes it is their own.

It's an acapella hit amongst our friends to this day. Sometimes 4-part harmony. Beautiful.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,chris in medina, ohio
Date: 09 Apr 11 - 02:41 AM

I tried to send this once - I'll try again.
I performed this a capella with Charlie Weiner on his Twelve inches of Weiner album back in the mid-70's in the Cleveland area. The tune was the church's one foundation.

The lyrics went like this:
The doggies had a party. They came from near and far.
And some dogs came by taxi and some dogs came by car.
And each dog wrote his name all in a little book.
And each dog hung his a__hole upon a separate hook.

One dog was not invited and that aroused his ire.
He ran into the party and loudly shouted, "Fire!"
And each dog ran outside and didn't stop to look
But grabbed a separate a__hole from off a separate hook.

This is a very sad story for it is very sore
To wear another's a__hole you've never worn before.
And that is why the doggies on land and sea and foam
Will smell each others a__hole in hopes it is their own.

I've performed it since and folks always seem to enjoy it. If you have a version you'd like to share, e-mail me at [e-mail] - Thanks, Chris

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,felixq78
Date: 31 May 09 - 08:48 AM

I first heard this piece performed at a poem in an old Australian movie named" Smiley gets a gun" Starring Chips Rafferty

In the movie is prompted by his mischevious father (To win a bet) to read the poem at a local church function.
Young Smiley introduces the poem saying it was written my Banjo Patterson, a famous and much loved Australian poet.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,about this song
Date: 27 May 08 - 05:51 PM

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOGGIES MEETING
From: GUEST,Lyrics Collector
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 10:55 PM

I found this version of "The Doggies Meeting" on

www.monologues.co.uk

THE DOGGIES MEETING
Anonymous


The doggies held a meeting,
They came from near and far,
Some came by motor cycle,
And some by motor car
Each doggie passed the doorway,
Each doggie signed the book
Each one unshipped his asshole
And hung it on a hook.

One dog was not invited
It sorely raised his ire
He ran into the meeting hall
And loudly shouted "Fire!"
It threw them in confusion
And without a second look
Each grabbed anothers asshole
From off another hook

And that's the reason why sir,
When walking down the street
And that's the reason why sir,
When doggies chance to meet
And that's the reason why sir,
On land, abroad or home
They'll sniff each other's backside...
To see if it's their own.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: EBarnacle
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 08:51 PM

I got it from Brian Bowers at the Bottom Line in the mid-70's, when he described it as trad. Obviously it isn't. His version used "Asshole" throughout. It would be more effective to only use it at the end.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: Rowan
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 06:01 PM

Thanks for that jog about Jeff Brown, Sandra.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,doc.tom
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 01:02 PM

Just found this fascinating thread.

Now Rap-a-tap-tap I learnt from peers who worked on the farms in Cornwall in the mid 1960s - that's the "Master went to market" version (there are several Rap-a-tap-tap songs of course, with the knocking "replacing" an imagined word).
The Dog's Meeting, on the other hand, I learnt from Mervyn Vincent around the same time - to Mervy'n own variation of The Church's One Foundation/Karno's Army. On one occasion, singing it out at a gig in Kent, we were told by an elderly member of the audience that his Grandfather used to sing it - and working the dates backwards we got to the 1890s!

Just for the record, Mervyn's text went:

Now the dog's once had a meeting, they came from near and far,
Some they came by aeroplane and some by motor car,
And when they got to the meeting house they had to sign a book
And each one hung his backside on the nearest hook.

Now they went into that meeting-house, every mother, son and sire,
No sooner had they got inside some bugger shouted "Fire!"
Out they came all in a rush - they had no time to look
And each one grabbed a backside from the nearest hook.

They got their backsides all mixed up which made them very sore,
For no-one had the same backside that they had had before,
And that's the reason why a dog will leave a bone
And go and sniff another dog's arse to see if it's his own.

I've heard it sung using 'arse' and 'arsehole' all the way through - it's much more effective to save it for the last line!

Tom

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 11:32 AM

Don't know what effect they had on the "tradition," but the song was recorded a few times on rugby song albums in the '70s. The tune was always, I think, "The Church's One Foundation."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 09:17 AM

Rowan - Jeff Brown was the fiddler in Bush Bandicoots

sandra

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 10:54 PM

I remember hearing at Primary School (Bundaberg) from a teacher who spiking interest in poetry in a bunch of kids during the 1950s. Ok - if memory is faulty it would have been the very early 60s.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 08:42 PM

Rowan

I sent this thread to Pam & Norm

sandra

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: Rowan
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 07:58 PM

When I saw the post;
From: Chris/Darwin - PM
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 08:22 AM

"This has been an interesting thread. A couple of points - Pam and Norm Merrigan had a bush band in the 80's called "The Bush Bandicoots". It included the great and late Wagga percussionist/story teller/character Ted Simpson, and a fiddle player whose name escapes me. They won the national bush band competition in Tamworth about 1986."

I started thinking about who the fiddle player might have been. I can't be sure but the name Warwick Nottage (whom I knew from Adelaide but he lived in/near Albury in the period mentioned) was a ripper fiddler and may be the one involved.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: Girl Friday
Date: 25 Jul 07 - 03:23 PM

Mumblin len learnt this one as a recitation while he was at school in the '60s. the lyrics went as follows:

The doggies had a meeting, they came from near and far,
Some came by motorcycle, and some by motor car.

And as each dog came in the hall, each signed a little book,
And hung his little tiddler upon a little hook.

One dog was not invited, that sorely raised his ire,
He ran into the meeting hall and loudly shouted FIRE!

The dogs were in confusion, without another look
Each grabbed for any tiddler from off of any hook.

And that is why when two dogs meet, on land, abroad or home,
Each sniffs the others tiddler, to see if its his own.


There wasn't a tune, as far as he remembers, but the guy he learnt it from had heard it from his grandfather, so it must go back a fair way!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 09:36 AM

G'day folkiedave,

I've given you John Manifold's The Stranger (not "sailor") on the other thread.

I don't seem to have included this one in my anthology Singabout - Selected Reprints, Bush Music Club, 1985 ... but I only had room (and budget) for ~ 100 of my favourites!

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: Folkiedave
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 08:44 AM

First heard it sung by Bob Roberts, of the Sailing Barge Cambria - not sure which tune he used though.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 08:31 AM

It also goes well to the tune of "The Ball of Kirriemuir".

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: Folkiedave
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 08:07 AM

Would any of the readers of this thread - especially Australian ones of course - be kind enough to look at this thread:

thread.cfm?threadid=103440&messages=1

Thanks in advance.....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 07:52 AM

Robin Morton used to recite a version of this with "Boys Of The Lough" in concert. I'd often wondered where it came from. Just looking at the words at the top of the thread, I found myself thinking of it to the tune of "The Laughing Policeman", for some reason - it works.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 03:58 AM

Bseed: The Church's One Foundation tune is best known as Fred Karno's Army:
We are Fred Karno's Army, the ragtime infantry
We cannot march, we cannot fight, what bloody use are we?

(Fred Karno was a music-hall comedian.)

As regards the Dog song, I am confident that Alan Bennett used it in Forty Years On. I seem to remember that the children sang it at Speech Day while the teachers sang Foundation. But it's a long time since I saw it and I may be wrong.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,Guest. David Jones
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 02:43 AM

First heard The Dogs Meeting sung to the tune for The Church has One Foundation at the Philladelphia Folk Festival in the 1970s. It also got adapted by Roberts and Barrand to the tune for the White Cockade. See the song printed out in the White Cockade format in Lyrics and Knowledge under the heading, Dogs Meeting.
David Jones

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: GUEST,Derek Davis
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 11:02 PM

"One Foundation" was the tune I heard Bryan Bowers use more than once for "The Dogs' Party." If I remember rightly, he credited Greg Brown with the song, so I guess that's where he picked it up.

Bowers liked to imagine singing it from the choir.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 07 - 12:42 AM

I was drunk in South India in 1988 when a drunken Indian friend began to sing this song to the tune of "A Church's One Foundation" I was stunned and very nearly died laughing..... the context, the context....

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:14 PM

I'm glad that I've lived long enough to read the line,"Vermilionize the bars". It is definitely one of those,I wish I'd said that, moments.
Thank-you....Giok

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: pavane
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 08:12 AM

There is a copy of The Chandler's Wife in the Bodleian Ballad library - 19th C but unfortunately undated.

(It contains the Rap Tap Tap line)

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Percustard
Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:39 PM

A new thread may be in order for

Celtic origins of the Oz tune "Travelling Down the Castlereigh"

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Percustard
Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:36 PM

Hi all,

Tursacan found a version of "Billygoat Overland", and fused it with "The Dogs Meeting". It was fun putting it all together but didnt really "cut it" in performances. So that medley wont be on our CD.

We are, however, still looking for the history and a celtic link for the Australian tune "Travelling Down the Castlereigh" which of course is linked to Basil Cosgrove's "The Rabbit Trapper's Song".

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Chris/Darwin
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 08:22 AM

This has been an interesting thread. A couple of points - Pam and Norm Merrigan had a bush band in the 80's called "The Bush Bandicoots". It included the great and late Wagga percussionist/story teller/character Ted Simpson, and a fiddle player whose name escapes me. They won the national bush band competition in Tamworth about 1986.

Of course, Harry Robertson's song about whaling off Ballina (NSW North Coast) was recorded by Nic Jones on "Penguin Eggs" under the banner of "The Humpback Whale". I like both versions.

Regards Chris

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 05:01 AM

Bob,

You say the Chandler's Wife is a sailor's song - are you assuming that it's a Ship's Chandler? I've always assumed that it was an ordinary chandler (i.e. candle-maker).

Until gas lighting became common in Victorian times, candles were the main source of lighting, but chandlery was a dying trade by 1900. I would have put the Chandler's Wife as a 19th century urban version of the earlier farm-based Rap-Tap-Tap.

But I have no hard evidence to support this, apart from the "feel" of the songs themselves. Can anybody provide any history on these two?

Wassail! V

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 12:06 AM

G'day Bert,

Very interesting to hear these datings: if "...'The Thing' was a clean derivative of 'The Chandler's Wife', when Billy Cotton sang it in the late Forties." and you "heard the 'dog' story told as a joke way before 1950, probably around 1944 because it was before we were evacuated..." it gives some order to the events.

If Meredith's informant is right, his (alleged) poem dates to some time well before Lawson's death in 1922. If The Chandler's Wife was sung with the "Boom, boom, boom" device it may be the source of that aspect - spread around the world in the innocuous form of The Thing. Of course, The Chandler's Wife is a sailor's song and could turn up anywhere in the world - especially a country like Australia where everyone arrived by boat.

It would be good to know if the boom, booms were part of the tradition from which Meredith collected in the 1950s. This would tell whether they drew on The Thing or on older versions of The Chandler's Wife. I will ask him, if I see him in Holbrook next month. At 80, he has retired down there to the family home, a bit more than halfway down to Melbourne.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 11:42 AM

Thanks Bob and Wolfgang,

I appreciate your help. I also had a look at the Humpbacked Whale thread and meandered through a few more related ones as well. I see that I'm not exactly the first person around here to have been helped on their way by the pair of you.

All the best,

Arthur

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 09:02 AM

G'day Arthur,

Harry Robertson grew up in Scotland (~Clyde?), managed an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce Aero engines during WWII, enlisted in the Royal Navy towards the end and served as a junior sub-lieutenant on trawlers in the North Sea, including a lot of moving back liberty ships &c after the war.

He worked on British whalers, out of South Georgia, in the Falkland Islands and then he anfd his wife emmigrated to Australia. He worked in the ship repair industry and also in coastal whaling off the New South Wales and Queensland coasts, during the 1950s. I met him during the 1960s and '70s when he lived in Sydney.

I had a Danish whaler for an uncle - married to my mother's sister. Vik worked in the Central districts as a stockman - mostly - but he occasionally chucked it in and headed down to Sydney to sign on for a 4 month stint in the southern whaling season ... then he would be back on a horse in the Australian outback!

Anyway, I will post the words to Harry's Ballina Whalers to a separate "LYR ADD" thread, to be sure that they are spotted and 'harvested'. I will also add a MIDIText file, but I will send the straight MIDI file to Alan of Oz for adding to the MIDI site, which is the easiest way to hear how a tune sounds.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 05:59 AM

Arthur,
we had Harry Robertson mentioned in some old thread (I entered the name in the DigiTrad and Forum search). I have not read all old threads, but I found that in about 1980 he was "well over fifty" and in 1999 he was "dead since a few years". Close enough if you only want to know roughly.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 05:37 AM

Thanks Bob,

I'd appreciate that very much, not that I'd be able to tell a myxolydian from a melodeon.

Of what era is/was Harry Robertson, and is the Ballina of the song in Queensland or somewhere else?

Please forgive my ignorance,

Arthur O'Malley

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 12:14 AM

G'day Arthur O'Malley,

That sounds very like Harry Robertson's song Ballina Whalers which has the chorus:
Heigh ho ye trawler men come on, forget the schnapper and the prawns,
It's out of Ballina we'll sail, a'fishing for the hump-backed whale.

I have just been digging through my 1972 copy of Harry's Songs of Whale-chasing Men, having heard an appalling desecration of this song at the Australian Folk Festival at Kiama, over the Queen's Birthday weekend in June. Apart from getting the Australian names wrong, the tune was a banal English effort, with none of the charm and colour of Harry's originals, drawn on his Scottish upbringing.

I got up sheet music for four of his songs for my music workshop last week and could not help noticing the variety of modes: one major, one minor, one Doriam and one Myxolydian! (BTW: Just to keep my conscience a little clearer on the subject of whaling, now fortunately banned - except for Japan's scientific experiment to see how many whales they can slaughter before someone sees through their subterfuge -I also included Eric Bogle's magnificent Song of the Whale an interesting Scottish/Australian counterpoint with another very Scottish Myxolydian tune.)

I could post the words and a MIDIText of the real tune, if you wish. (Sourced, of course, from the Victorian Folk Music Club's 1970 Tradition Magazine, not the Alberts Publication 1972 songbook that threatens to come round and repossess the house if I so much as write the words on a blackboard!)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 09:14 PM

Hi Bob,

See you at the Dog. Would you be able to bring a selection of The Bush Music Club CDs and Books along with you?

We would like to begin a small libary of Bush Music material (to add to my mountain of internet printed material).

If you have any prints of those new CDs mentioned above we'd like one of those .

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bert
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 04:46 PM

My Mother told me that 'The Thing' was a clean derivative of 'The Chandler's Wife', when Billy Cotton sang it in the late Forties.

And I heard the 'dog' story told as a joke way before 1950, probably around 1944 because it was before we were evacuated. Of course we were small kids then so the dogs were looking for 'their bottoms'.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 07:10 AM

Please forgive the thread creep, but maybe somebody can help.

I heard an Australian song I really liked some years ago on a local radio station in Luxembourg of all places. It was a whaling song, the gist of which was to forget about going after cissy stuff like herring and cod and to join up and go after whales.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Arthur O'Malley

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Marcus Campus Bellorum
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 12:13 AM

It appears there are seven tunes for "Travelling down the Castlereigh" but this is probably a good point to start a new thread. I will keep looking and get back.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 12:02 AM

G'day again Mark,

I forgot to say they I will probably see you all in Tursacan at the Loaded Dog Folk Club, Annandale, in a week and a half ... and then I will probably be passing through Canberra early in September to talk with the National Library of Australian, Film and Sound Archive about a 3-CD release of archival material from the '50s.

This will be a new CD of material from John Meredith's 1980s field collections, a re-release of material from his 1950s work (already released on cassette by Carrawobbity Publications) and a compilation of (original Bushwhackers and Rambleers tracks, released on 78 rpm records in the 1950s by Wattle recordings. Anyway, I may get a chance to call in; first or second week, before I head for a bunker in the middle of Australia for the duration of the damned Olympics!

Regard(les)s,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Marcus Campus Bellorum
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 11:55 PM

HI Bob,

I am a bonafide member for the moment.

PM should be easier but "how the bloody hell do ya do it"?

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 11:52 PM

G'day Mark,

The only real relationship between The Dogs Meeting and The Chandler's Shop is that they used the same tune: The Lincolnshire Poacher and the both use the boom, boom, boom, device, presumably pinched from The Thing.

I will bundle up some texts and MIDIText tunes on the others and forward to you (or do you want them to the address that Callie PMed?). Copyright would be a problem if you read the message printed in the centre gutter of the Albert Publications 1972 collection of Whaling Songs of Harry Robertson. It reads (complete with the emphatic capitalisation):

WARNING It is an infringement of Copyright to copy by hand or on blackboard, to print or duplicate by any process whatever or to make photographic slides of any portion of the Words or Music of the Copyright Works in this Album without written permission of the Publisher. Legal action will be taken against offenders.

The basic connection with on Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song and the tune for Travelling down the Castlereagh is that Ewan's tune is (v. loosely) based on the other ... but I seem to remember a connection between some tune or other for Travelling down the Castlereagh and another of your Celtic connections tunes.

I need to refresh my mind on that by looking back on the past postings. Of course, if you got your membership nailed down (no cost, lots of advantages) you could search back on your postings (not those as "GUEST").

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 08:05 PM

Geez there's a lot of work in building up a thematic repertoire!!

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 03:11 AM

Gadday all,

Thanks for the info.

Sorcha, I had no luck with your link. Will try again later.

Bob,

what is the relationship of The Dogs Meeting to The Chandler's Wife ?

I would appreciate the fine details in an email Bob.

And as for more modern celtic/Australian song links the song of the Whale from Eric Bogle and Harry Robertsons Whales sounds good. More info. Copyright maybe problematic.

I will also do a search on Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song and The tune for Travellling down the Castlereigh. Which I have read about but have forgotten.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 12:45 AM

Thanks to a link provided by Sorcha you can read all about the 'Bush Controversy' at http://www.uq.oz.au/~mlwham/banjo/bush_controversy.html, but according to Paterson many years after the event this was a good natured PR stunt to generate more column inches (and hence pay) for each of the poets.

And I'd always believed that that hated each other's guts. Regards, John

Subject: Lyr Add: IN ANSWER TO VARIOUS BARDS (Paterson)
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 12:33 AM

Mark, my memory of the Lawson/Paterson acrimony is fairly dim but you can read one episode of the story in the following. Regards, John

^^

An Answer to Various Bards

(Original title: In Answer to Various Bards)

by A. B. "Banjo" Paterson

Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom --
But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb".
So, before they curse the bushland, they should let their fancy range,
And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change.

Now, for instance, Mr Lawson -- well, of course, we almost cried
At the sorrowful description how his "little 'Arvie" died,
And we lachrymosed in silence when "His Father's mate" was slain;
Then he went and killed the father, and we had to weep again.
Ben Duggan and Jack Denver, too, he caused them to expire,
After which he cooked the gander of Jack Dunn, of Nevertire;
And, no doubt, the bush is wretched if you judge it by the groan
Of the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own.

And he spoke in terms prophetic of a revolution's heat,
When the world should hear the clamour of those people in the street;
But the shearer chaps who start it -- why, he rounds on them the blame,
And he calls 'em "agitators who are living on the game".
Bur I "over-write" the bushmen! Well, I own without a doubt
That I always see the hero in the "man from furthest out".
I could never contemplate him through an atmosphere of gloom,
And a bushman never struck me as a subject for "the tomb".

If it ain't all "golden sunshine" where the "wattle branches wave",
Well, it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all "lonely grave".
And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff;
Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown,
Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
For he's jotting down the figures, and he's adding up the bills
While his heart is simply aching for a sight of Southern hills.

Then he hears a wool-team passing with a rumble and a lurch,
And, although the work is pressing, yet it brings him off his perch,
For it stirs him like a message from his station friends afar
And he seems to sniff the ranges in the scent of wool and tar;
And it takes him back in fancy, half in laughter, half in tears,
to a sound of other voices and a thought of other years,
When the woolshed rang with bustle from the dawning of the day,
And the shear-blades were a-clicking to the cry of "Wool away!"

Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was firmer set --
And he feels his flabby muscles with a feeling of regret.
But the wool-team slowly passes, and his eyes go slowly back
To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack,
And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall,
And he thinks there's something healthy in the bush-life after all.
But we'll go no more a-droving in the wind or in the sun,
For out fathers' hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done.

There's a nasty dash of danger where the long-horned bullock wheels,
And we like to live in comfort and to get our reg'lar meals.
For to hang around the township suits us better, you'll agree,
And a job at washing bottles is the job for such as we.
Let us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd and push
Till we lose the love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush;
And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer,
And we'll slip across to England -- it's a nicer place than here;

For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store,
And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more.
But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye,
So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I.
Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day,
And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars,
And then return to Sydney and vermilionize the bars.

The Bulletin, 1 October 1892

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 11:43 PM

G'day Snuffy,

Until you mentioned it, I didn't realise that I had neglected to include The Chandler's Wife in my 6 July 1999 posting. It was just an oversight, certainly not prudery, as I contributed a version to a roneoed sub rosa collection of songs (that eventually became Snatches & Lays - Songs Miss Lilywhite Never Taught Us) - about 1962/3.

I heard it from the late Declan Affley, an ex-seaman of Irish/Welsh background but I always assumed it was part of the common (and very international) body of sailor's songs which are well represented in Australia since, until the 1960s, the only way almost anyone came or went was by ship and it was inevitable that in a long voyage there would be some gleaning of sea lore.

Mark: If you need further background on this group, i can email directly for fine details.

BTW: With your interest in Celtic/Australian links, have you been looking at more modern instances? At my Workshop last night I was looking at some - having been annoyed to hear banal English tunes applied to Harry Robertson's whaling songs, I dug out Harry's beautifullyScottish originals (and, to give equal time, was comparing to Eric Bogle's magnificent Song of the Whale).

This also led me past Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song, which Ewan always said was to an Australian tune (that used commonly for Paterson's Travelling Down the Castlereagh) but it comes out as a much more modal Scottish-feeling tune under Ewan's hands. It is a song I have always enjoyed, even before I worked a spell in the big construction game - mostly hydro dams - in the '60s.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 11:01 PM

Mark, I found Billy Goat, and posted a link to it in the req thread.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Snuffy
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 08:37 PM

See also Rap-Tap-Tap and 2 versionss of The Chandler's Wife in the DT Database for undated (but presumably earlier) Boom Boom Booms from the Northern hemisphere

Wassail! V