BLUEY BRINK (DT Lyrics)

There once was a shearer, bename Bluey Brink
A devil for work and a devil for drink.
He could shear his hundred a day without fear
And drink without winking, four gallon of beer.

Now Jimmy, the barman, who served out the drink,
He hated the sight of this here Bluey Brink,
Who stayed much too late and who come much too soon;
At evening, at morning, at night and at noon.

One morning as Jimmy was cleaning the bar
With sulfuric acid he kept in a jar,
Old Bluey come yelling and bawling with thirst,
"Whatever you got, Jim, just hand me the first."

Now, it ain't in the history, it ain't put in print
But Bluey drank acid with never a wink,
Saying, "That's the stuff, Jimmy! Well, strike me stone dead.
This'll make me the ringer of Stevenson's shed."

Now all that long day, as he served out the beer
Poor Jimmy was sick with his trouble and fear.
Too worried to argue, too anxious to fight,
Seeing the shearer a corpse in his fright.

Now early next morning he opened the door,
And along come the shearer asking for more;
With his eyebrows all singed and his whiskers deranged,
And holes in his hide like a dog with the mange.

Says Jimmy, "And how did you find the new stuff?"
Says Bluey, "It's fine, but I ain't had enough.
It gives me great courage to shear and to fight,
But why does that stuff set me whiskers alight

I thought I knew drink, but I must have been wrong;
For that stuff that you give me was proper and strong.
It set me to coughing, and you know I'm no liar
And every cough set me whiskers on fire."


Per AL Lloyd on Australian Bush Songs (Riverside RLP 12-606.) The
tune is a variant of "Dinah and her Villikins" (without the refrain &
softened out & syncopated a bit) which tune, Lloyd notes, has probably
been used for more texts than any other in the English-speaking
world. AJS
tune here supplied by MG

@Australian @drink @sheep @humor
filename[ BLUBRINK
TUNE FILE: BLUBRINK
CLICK TO PLAY
AJS

Bluey Brink

DESCRIPTION: Bluey Brink, "a devil for work and a devil for drink," walks into Jimmy's bar and demands the closest available liquid -- the sulfuric acid used to clean the bar. Brink stomps out, and Jimmy fears for his life. But Brink returns next day asking for more
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1927 (Finger-FrontierBallads)
KEYWORDS: Australia talltale humorous drink poison
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Fahey-Eureka-SongsThatMadeAustralia, pp. 148-149, "Bluey Brink" (1 text, 1 tune)
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, pp. 258-260, "Billy Brink" (1 text)
Finger-FrontierBallads, pp. 139-141, "Billy Brink" (1 text)
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 124-125, "Bluey Brink" (1 text)
DT, BLUBRINK*
ADDITIONAL: A. K. MacDougall, _An Anthology of Classic Australian Lore_ (earlier published as _The Big Treasury of Australian Foiklore_), The Five Mile Press, 1990, 2002, p. 291, "Billy Brink" (1 text)
Roud #8838
RECORDINGS:
John Greenway, "Bluey Brink" (on JGreenway01)
A. L. Lloyd, "Bluey Brink" (on Lloyd4, Lloyd08)
SAME TUNE:
The Wedding of Lochan McGraw (Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, pp. 181-182)
NOTES [275 words]: Fahey suspects this of having been the work of A.L. Lloyd, who originally collected it. Australians like to boast of their drinking, however (though their per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages, other than beer, is actually rather low), so they have gladly adopted the song. However, Gwenda Beed Davey and Graham Seal, A Guide to Australian Folklore, Kangaroo Press, 2003, p. 46, claims that it is from the nineteenth century. Note that the name in Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition and MacDougall is "Billy Brink,"and Davey/Seal mention the name 'Bluey Brinks," implying some folk processing. Though the Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition version (collected from Simon McDonald by O'Connor and Officer) and Finger-FrontierBallads versions as clever as Lloyd's version. Perhaps the likeliest explanation is that Lloyd tightened up a traditional song.
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2 add that the tune for this is "The Wedding of Lochan McGraw."
Incidentally, it appears something vaguely like this actually happened once, although the situation was completely different -- it was on a whaler in the Arctic. Whalers were hard drinkers anyway, and when their ships were damaged, they had a tendency to attempt to drink the booze rather than let it sink with the ship. According to Norman Watson, The Dundee Whalers, Tuckwell Press, 2003, pp. 84-85, "The SS River Tay... sank in millpond calm on her maiden voyage in 1868 after being bumped by ice at Pond Bay. As she was sinking, crewman David Walker drank a bottle of carbolic acid thinking it was whiskey.... Walker died in 20 minutes." - RBW
Last updated in version 5.0
File: FaE148

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