G'day Walrus,

Snatches of the "Marlborough" song were collected by John meredith from the families of WW I soldiers. These clearly could date back to WW I, but the only evidence of greater antiquity is the family statement that "Grand-dad knew and he said it was very old ..."

Pete Coe's fragment comes from this group of post-WW I snatches of song - probably from one of the Australian books that tried to argue that these were signs of some "proper" English ancestor to Waltzing Matilda ... he made the rest up to flesh it out ... and, I think, discovered he had created his own Frankenstein's Monster!

Regards,

Bob Bolton