G'day Percustard ... and McGrath,

I noticed, reading one of John Meredith's books this week, that he always claimed that The Bushman's Song and Waltzing Matilda were 'collected' songs, from Paterson's assembly of the book Old Bush Songs that were 'accidentally' grouped with his 'own compositions' by his publisher.

I think that later research and evidence has clearly shown that Paterson did write Waltzing Matilda ... even if he did draw on some older material that he may have come across somewhere in the Bush. However, there remains the nagging feelinf that The Bushman's Song does not sound anything like anything else Paterson wrote ... good writing to a character - or scrubbed up 'folk song' ... who knows?

Anyway, the words were only printed as a poem ... and a lot of people put their own tunes to it (or remembered tunes already attached ...?), so there are a number of different collected tunes. I don't remember seeing any consistent collectionof all the 'also rans' ... but it would be interesting to see if there is any commonality in the other tunes. (Someone should put it all together ... preferably not me ... !)

McGrath: I don't see much to support the specific link of Chinese to Scab and 'leprosy', in the union sense either, and I note that Meredith changed the "8 or 10 dashed Chinamen" line to "8 or 10 non-union men" when he sang it with The Bushwhackers Band in the mid 1950s.