G'day all,

John in Brisbane: Billygoat Overland is a beaut song - a 'Banjo' Paterson poem set to the same Lincolnshire Poacher tune. It is in the (~1965) Penguin Book of Australian Songs (book 1) and well worth a look.

WW: The collecting notes show that Fred Sloane (locally known in Lithgow, NSW, as "the man of 1000 songs") knew The Dog's Meeting as a recitation and had never heard it sung. I guess that someone who heard "The Thing" - the Phil Harris 40s number - decided that the poem fitted it well enough and enjoyed singing it and using the (boom, boom, boom) device, which may have already been part of the poem ... after all, this sort of evasion device did not start with the commercial song.

Regards,

Bob Bolton