G'day Joe,

I've just skimmed through the thread and I seem to remember that another name for this tune (mentioned by A.L. Lloyd?) was The Voyage of the Bigler (or something quite like that. I don't know it, but it could be one off the sea or canal songs that have been mentioned in passing.

Whatever the parent song in Australian, it must have been popular at one point as there are at least 4 separate songs using variants of the tune. Sally Sloane's Knickerbocker Line came from her father-in-law and sounds very London music Hall. Duke Tritton's Great Northern Line would be a late 19th century bullockdriver's parody of Knickerbocker Line.

The Dr. Percy Jones collected version of Lachlan Tigers would be a shearing song of the same period and Lloyd claims to have heard it (but not "collected" it ... he was just a young Pommy bloke on an Empire employment scheme then ... sort of a latter-day, junior "remittance man", really) and this is the tune he uses (in 4/4, instead of Knickerbocker Line's 6/8). The Station Cook (or Towlers Bay) is another, unrelated parody from the shearing area - not boasting about shearing ... whingeing about the food!

The inexplicable appearance of the words Knickerbocker Line(r?) in the Welsh song might suggest that it comes from the music hall song as well.

Regards,

Bob Bolton