G'day again,

Snuffy: I'm not sure where you are, but the song you post in that other thread is certainly a variant of the well known Australian song normally called Lazy Harry's. That is set in the the Gundagai area ... but is unrelated to either of the Gundagai songs mentioned so far.

Interestingly, Australian folklorist the late John Meredith was down in Gundagai in the late 1960s with my brother Eric. They were talking to a bloke in a pub and mentioned old songs ... and asked him if he knew the song Lazy Harry's. He replied that he did not ... but that his dad had been known as Lazy Harry ... and he had run a grog shanty (an unlicensed liquor shot in improvised premises) on golfields a few miles from Gundagai many years before.

He had apparently obtained supplies of grog from his father, who ran a pub in Gundagai. I published the story of this interview some years back in Singabout supplement to Mulga Wire magazine.

Anyway, I am intrigued by this Suffolk version of Lazy Harry's and will study it with great interest. As you say, three or four wars give ample opportunity for the song to travel between Australian and British troops ... but it is nevertheless fascinating.

BTW: It is interesting to note that John in Brisbane invoked my name in the first post on that thread and I didn't respond (I think I might have been away on holidays at the time ...? Sometimes you get trapped in the reall world.)

Regards,

Bob Bolton