G'day again,

Landlady's Daughter: Thanks for the Portland Maine version!
I'm fairly certain that I have submitted a version of Across the Western Plains, but I can't see it in the Digital Tradition. Perhaps it has been harvested but not yet loaded into the DT. Anyway, I went back to the source of most versions sung these days … and here is a slightly different version (with some comments and emendations by me in italics). This should be interesting, in that it is pretty well the immediate ancestor of the words that Denis and Seamus wrote - for their new circumstances of the '70s.

A version of this song was in AB 'Banjo' Paterson's book of collected material Old Bush Songs, 1905/1924. When this was revised, in 1957, by Douglas Stewart and Nancy Keesing, they expanded the song with some verses published separately in The Bulletin. I don't think I have ever heard anyone sing the third verse (starting with " I have an old shirt, …") and it is obviously one that leaked over from the Across the Western Ocean ancestor. The sailor of the Western Ocean is very concerned about his clothing and gear - he has to wear it all over the world and it's a long way to the clothing store … our drover on the Western plains is far more concerned with the state of his hangover!

This version had only a 2-line chorus, so I had added the usual 3rd and 4th lines (italicised. It's interesting to see just how sparse these words, from early 19th century, are - compared with modern versions, where singers seem to slip in a quite a number of extra words … perhaps we are no longer in tune with silences.

The Jolly, Jolly Grog and Tobacco
Anon.

Oh, I'm a jolly lad, though my fortune it's sad,
And if ever I get luck I should wonder,
For I've spent all my brass in the bottom of the glass,
Now across the Western Plains I must wander.

Chorus For it's all through the grog, the jolly, jolly grog,
Oh, it's all through the grog and tobacco.
I've spent all my tin, in a shanty drinking gin,
And across the Western Plains I must wander.

I'm stiff and stony broke, and I've parted with my moke,
And the sky is looking black as thunder,
And the boss of the shanty too, for I haven't got a sou.
That's the way you're treated when you're under.

I have an old shirt, it's the only one I've got,
And the collar is burnt to a cinder,
If I don't get any more I will never have a store,
So I'll save this old shirt to make tinder.

I'm crook in the head, for I haven't been to bed
Since I first touched this shanty with my plunder,
I see centipedes and snakes, and I'm full of aches and shakes
So I'd better make a push out over yonder.

I take the Old Man Plain, criss-cross it all again,
Until my eyes the track no longer see;
My beer and brandy brain seeks balmy sleep in vain,
I feel-as if I had the Darling Pea.

Repentance brings reproof, so I sadly "Pad the hoof"
All day I see the mirage of the trees,
But it all will have an end when I reach the river bend,
And listen to the singing of the breeze,

Then hang the jolly prog, the hocussed shanty grog,
The beer that's loaded with tobacco;
Grafting humour I am in-and I'll stick the peg right in,
And settle down once more to yakka. ^^

"Reconstructed from the version in Paterson's Old Bush Songs and some fragments in the Bulletin of 4th May 1916-"'Bi1ly B.': Here's another Wild Colonial Song, or as much as the venerable bushranger could recollect of it."
"Yakka" - work. "

Above is the note given in Old Bush Songs, 1957 … and they only felt the need to explain "Yakka". I should probably add a few more, for a wider audience:

Shanty = cheap grog shop
Old Man Plain = The wide plains (the great Western Plains) - use of Aboriginal/Pidgin sense of "old man" meaning "big" … "the biggest".
Darling Pea = Sickness (usually of stock, not the stockman) caused by eating native pea of swainsonia spp.
Prog = Old northern English dialect word for food, (particularly if scrounged)

regards,

Bob Bolton
^^