Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOGS' MEETING
From:
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 09:01 AM

I have been indoors with the 'flu for the last few days and I finally got a chance to look through a book of Australian folk songs that I picked up at a library sale a while ago. It is a variant of "The Thing".

Some say John Lawson wrote it. Anyway, it seems to come from the Sydney Blue Mountains area.

The notation "(boom, boom, boom)" means knock on a table or something instead of singing words,

THE DOGS' MEETING

Oh, the dogs once held a concert. They came from near and far.
Oh, some they came by aeroplane, and some by motor car.
Before into the concert hall they were allowed to look,
Each dog had to take his (boom, boom, boom) and hang it on a hook.

Oh, hardly were they seated there, each mother, son and sire,
When a dirty little yeller dog began to holler 'fire'.
Oh, they rushed in panic. They didn't stop to look.
Each dog he grabbed a (boom, boom, boom) from off the nearest hook.

And that's the reason why you see, on walking down the street,
Each dog will stop and swap a smell with every dog he meets.
And that's the reason why a dog will leave a good fat bone
To go and smell a (boom, boom, boom) in hope to find his own.

(Repeat last line)

When I am less bleary-eyed, I will work out the tune; but it looks like the same tune as "The Thing".

Murray
^^

Subject: The Dogs' Meeting
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 12:30 PM

Hope you can get the tune out soon, Murray. This one sounds like a keeper. I'd like to try it out on a group, if the mood is right.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Barbara
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 12:53 PM

Joe, you should know better. Click here and repent! I've heard this sung to "the Churches One Foundation", but didn't play the tune in DT yet to see if that's the same. I've heard this attributed to one of those English collectors, Tawny? Sharp?
Murray's song is different with the "boom boom boom", and makes me wonder, what's a three syllable synonym for 'asshole'?
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 01:25 PM

Oh.
Well, I can put the blame on Murray. He shoulda checked, and I trusted him to do that. Still, if he hadn't posted it, I wouldn't have found it.
Thanks, Murray, even though I can never, ever trust you again...
-Joe Offer-
(I think I'll sing Murray's version of the song. The other might besmirch my reputation....)

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: alison
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 10:00 PM

Hi,

I've heard it done to "THE LINCOLNSHIRE POACHER" (or "Oh I'm a Golden wonder crisp" for those who remember the ad)

then the boom, boom, boom, bit fits in.

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 10:34 PM

Let's see, "The Church's One Foundation"--isn't that sung to the tune of "Lloyd George Knew My Father"? --seed

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: alison
Date: 03 Jul 99 - 10:37 PM

No that's "Onward Christian soldiers"

slainte

alison

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOGS' PARTY
From: DonMeixner
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 12:25 AM

THE DOGS' PARTY

The dogs they gave a party. They came from near and far.
Some came in by taxi while still others they came by car.
They came into the meeting house and signed the register book,
And each one hung his asshole upon a different hook.

One dog was not invited, which filled his heart with ire.
He leaned into the meeting house and boldly shouted "Fire!"
The dogs they got excited and did not stop to look,
But each one grabbed an asshole from off the nearest hook.

That's the end of the story, and you know it's very sore
To wear another's asshole you've never worn before.
That's why whenever dogs meet, on air or land or foam,
They sniff each other's asshole in hopes to find their own.

I had heard this song ages ago and was told it was written by Bryan Bowers.

Don

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 01:47 AM

G'day,
This is supposed to have been written by HENRY Lawson who wrote much of our best known poetry. It doesn't appear in any of his collected works not surprisingly. The tune is "The Lincolnshire Poacher" as Alison suggested. The same tune was used for "The Thing" mentioned by Murray.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 08:24 PM

Bryan Bowes didnt write it, he only adapted it from some other source

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From:
Date: 04 Jul 99 - 09:35 PM

so I See

don

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From:
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 01:59 AM

Yeah Alan. I don't even know John Lawson--I blame my flu.

Joe, I'll blame my flu for not checking too; however, it does seem to be a more "original" version. I was just glumly looking through the book when the song showed up and made my day. I thought I had to tell somebody! Anyway I looked at the notes and the tune is the same as "The Thing" just as Alison and Alan say.

Murray

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 02:59 AM

G'day Murray,

I don't know what other sources there are for this little ditty, but John Meredith collected it in the Mudgee/Gulgong area (definitely Henry Lawson territory)in the early 1950s from a local who claimed Henry had penned it in the local pub after some discussion about the personal habits of dogs.

The song is in Folksongs of Australia and the men and women who sang them, vol. 1, John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, ~1968, Ure Smith. I will check the exact details and also see if there are any other references. It is wryly amusing that this turns up under this heading at the same time as 'Gil' flames us all in his "Aussies ban American Bands" serve.

Anyway, this song can cause problems across cultural barriers. I remember Norm and Pam Merrigan (even if I can't remember what there 1970s band was called!) saying that, while Norm served in Malaya with the RAAF, they did a 'Bush Band' job for some cultural mission in Indonesia.

They reviewed their song line-up and deleted a song they thought a bit too sexy to sing to the Indonesians and replaced it with "The Dog's Festival". It turns out that this proved highly offensive - to sing about unclean things like dogs (not the boom, boom, booms!) - whilst songs about reasonably non-explicit dalliance were perfectly acceptable.

Oh well, you can't win them all.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOGS' MEETING
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 07:25 PM

G'day again,

I scanned in the full reference and words (but not the music, which is simply The Lincolnshire Poacher with the Boom, bomm, booms ofThe Thing.

Folk Songs of Australia and the men and women who sang them, John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1967, pp160-161.

Several elderly people have told John Meredith that Henry Lawson wrote 'The Dogs' Meeting' as well as the well-known 'Shearer's Lament'. When John was taking part in a concert at Mudgee, some time ago, an old man told him that he was with Lawson when he wrote it. They were sitting, the old chap said, on a seat outside one of the local pubs watching the dogs do what dogs do when they meet, and afterwards, in the bar, Henry wrote out the ballad and read it aloud. There are certainly a lot of dogs about Mudgee streets even today and Lawson certainly knew his dogs (see, for example, 'The Shearing of the Cook's Dog', 'That There Dog of Mine', 'The Loaded Dog', or 'Two Dogs and a Fence'), but whether he actually wrote these verses has been doubted by several reputable authorities.

When Bill Boundy sang 'The Dogs' Meeting' he thumped on a table with a boom, boom-boom rhythm in place of some words. A popular song of a few years ago, sung to the same tune, used the same method of replacing words with a thump, thump-thump.

'The Dogs' Meeting' was recorded at Fred Sloane's house in Lithgow. When Boundy had completed his song, Fred remarked that he had never heard it sung before, only as a recitation, so Meredith recorded him as well.

'The Dogs' Meeting'

Oh, the dogs once held a concert,
They came from near and far,
Oh, some they came by aeroplane,
And some by motor car.
Before into the concert hall
They were allowed to look,
Each dog had to take his (boom, boom-boom)
And hang it on a hook.
Oh, each dog had to take his (boom, boom-boom)
And hang it on a hook.

Oh, hardly were they seated there,
Each mother, son and sire,
When a dirty little yeller dog
Began to holler 'Fire!'
Out they rushed in panic-
They didn't stop to look-
Each dog he grabbed a (boom, boom-boom)
From off the nearest hook.

And that's the reason why you see,
On walking down the street,
Each dog will stop and swap a smell
With every dog he meets.
And that's the reason why a dog
Will leave a good fat bone
To go and smell a (boom, boom-boom)
In hope to find his own.
To go and smell a (boom, boom-boom)
In hope to find his own.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 07:51 PM

Another dry Australian song to the same tune is 'Billygoat Overland' penned by Banjo Patterson as I recall. I don't believe that it's in the DT. I had a quick look for the lyrics last night without success.

Regards
John

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Winters Wages
Date: 05 Jul 99 - 09:21 PM

Is this similar to the one done by Phil Harris in the 40's?? 'Get out of here with that Boom Boom Boom, before I call a cop."...worth a ponder WW

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Jul 99 - 02:57 AM

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

Subject: The Bush Controversy
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 07:39 PM

Hi All,

I just discovered this thread and am out searching for the Lincolnshire Poacher and the thing.

I have a few questions with regard to works from Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson. I am interested in the "Bush Controversy" that was played out in the Sydney papers (at the turn of the century I think).

I am keen to find verse/tunes which have links like "The Dogs meeting" and "Billygoat Overland" (to the tune of "The Lincolnshire Poacher") which by coincidence or by plan, have brought Lawson's and Patterson's works together.

Has the Bush Controversy been covered before in Mudcat?

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: paddymac
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 07:52 PM

This is a fun song (any version of it) for late in the night, or any other time you've got a reasonably well lubricated audience. I have never heard the Aussie version with the "boom, boom, boom", but that strikes me as a great device for audience participation.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Cobble
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 08:13 PM

Good on yer cobber.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 08:33 PM

Patterson's Billygoat Overland is proving a difficult piece of work to find on Mudcat.

Any clues?

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Snuffy
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 08:37 PM

See also Rap-Tap-Tap and 2 versionss of The Chandler's Wife in the DT Database for undated (but presumably earlier) Boom Boom Booms from the Northern hemisphere

Wassail! V

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 11:01 PM

Mark, I found Billy Goat, and posted a link to it in the req thread.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 21 Aug 00 - 11:43 PM

G'day Snuffy,

Until you mentioned it, I didn't realise that I had neglected to include The Chandler's Wife in my 6 July 1999 posting. It was just an oversight, certainly not prudery, as I contributed a version to a roneoed sub rosa collection of songs (that eventually became Snatches & Lays - Songs Miss Lilywhite Never Taught Us) - about 1962/3.

I heard it from the late Declan Affley, an ex-seaman of Irish/Welsh background but I always assumed it was part of the common (and very international) body of sailor's songs which are well represented in Australia since, until the 1960s, the only way almost anyone came or went was by ship and it was inevitable that in a long voyage there would be some gleaning of sea lore.

Mark: If you need further background on this group, i can email directly for fine details.

BTW: With your interest in Celtic/Australian links, have you been looking at more modern instances? At my Workshop last night I was looking at some - having been annoyed to hear banal English tunes applied to Harry Robertson's whaling songs, I dug out Harry's beautifullyScottish originals (and, to give equal time, was comparing to Eric Bogle's magnificent Song of the Whale).

This also led me past Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song, which Ewan always said was to an Australian tune (that used commonly for Paterson's Travelling Down the Castlereagh) but it comes out as a much more modal Scottish-feeling tune under Ewan's hands. It is a song I have always enjoyed, even before I worked a spell in the big construction game - mostly hydro dams - in the '60s.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: Lyr Add: IN ANSWER TO VARIOUS BARDS (Paterson)
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 12:33 AM

Mark, my memory of the Lawson/Paterson acrimony is fairly dim but you can read one episode of the story in the following. Regards, John

^^

An Answer to Various Bards

(Original title: In Answer to Various Bards)

by A. B. "Banjo" Paterson

Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom --
But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb".
So, before they curse the bushland, they should let their fancy range,
And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change.

Now, for instance, Mr Lawson -- well, of course, we almost cried
At the sorrowful description how his "little 'Arvie" died,
And we lachrymosed in silence when "His Father's mate" was slain;
Then he went and killed the father, and we had to weep again.
Ben Duggan and Jack Denver, too, he caused them to expire,
After which he cooked the gander of Jack Dunn, of Nevertire;
And, no doubt, the bush is wretched if you judge it by the groan
Of the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own.

And he spoke in terms prophetic of a revolution's heat,
When the world should hear the clamour of those people in the street;
But the shearer chaps who start it -- why, he rounds on them the blame,
And he calls 'em "agitators who are living on the game".
Bur I "over-write" the bushmen! Well, I own without a doubt
That I always see the hero in the "man from furthest out".
I could never contemplate him through an atmosphere of gloom,
And a bushman never struck me as a subject for "the tomb".

If it ain't all "golden sunshine" where the "wattle branches wave",
Well, it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all "lonely grave".
And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff;
Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown,
Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
For he's jotting down the figures, and he's adding up the bills
While his heart is simply aching for a sight of Southern hills.

Then he hears a wool-team passing with a rumble and a lurch,
And, although the work is pressing, yet it brings him off his perch,
For it stirs him like a message from his station friends afar
And he seems to sniff the ranges in the scent of wool and tar;
And it takes him back in fancy, half in laughter, half in tears,
to a sound of other voices and a thought of other years,
When the woolshed rang with bustle from the dawning of the day,
And the shear-blades were a-clicking to the cry of "Wool away!"

Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was firmer set --
And he feels his flabby muscles with a feeling of regret.
But the wool-team slowly passes, and his eyes go slowly back
To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack,
And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall,
And he thinks there's something healthy in the bush-life after all.
But we'll go no more a-droving in the wind or in the sun,
For out fathers' hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done.

There's a nasty dash of danger where the long-horned bullock wheels,
And we like to live in comfort and to get our reg'lar meals.
For to hang around the township suits us better, you'll agree,
And a job at washing bottles is the job for such as we.
Let us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd and push
Till we lose the love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush;
And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer,
And we'll slip across to England -- it's a nicer place than here;

For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store,
And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more.
But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye,
So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I.
Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day,
And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars,
And then return to Sydney and vermilionize the bars.

The Bulletin, 1 October 1892

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 12:45 AM

Thanks to a link provided by Sorcha you can read all about the 'Bush Controversy' at http://www.uq.oz.au/~mlwham/banjo/bush_controversy.html, but according to Paterson many years after the event this was a good natured PR stunt to generate more column inches (and hence pay) for each of the poets.

And I'd always believed that that hated each other's guts. Regards, John

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 03:11 AM

Gadday all,

Thanks for the info.

Sorcha, I had no luck with your link. Will try again later.

Bob,

what is the relationship of The Dogs Meeting to The Chandler's Wife ?

I would appreciate the fine details in an email Bob.

And as for more modern celtic/Australian song links the song of the Whale from Eric Bogle and Harry Robertsons Whales sounds good. More info. Copyright maybe problematic.

I will also do a search on Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song and The tune for Travellling down the Castlereigh. Which I have read about but have forgotten.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 08:05 PM

Geez there's a lot of work in building up a thematic repertoire!!

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 11:52 PM

G'day Mark,

The only real relationship between The Dogs Meeting and The Chandler's Shop is that they used the same tune: The Lincolnshire Poacher and the both use the boom, boom, boom, device, presumably pinched from The Thing.

I will bundle up some texts and MIDIText tunes on the others and forward to you (or do you want them to the address that Callie PMed?). Copyright would be a problem if you read the message printed in the centre gutter of the Albert Publications 1972 collection of Whaling Songs of Harry Robertson. It reads (complete with the emphatic capitalisation):

WARNING It is an infringement of Copyright to copy by hand or on blackboard, to print or duplicate by any process whatever or to make photographic slides of any portion of the Words or Music of the Copyright Works in this Album without written permission of the Publisher. Legal action will be taken against offenders.

The basic connection with on Ewan MacColl's The Fitter's Song and the tune for Travelling down the Castlereagh is that Ewan's tune is (v. loosely) based on the other ... but I seem to remember a connection between some tune or other for Travelling down the Castlereagh and another of your Celtic connections tunes.

I need to refresh my mind on that by looking back on the past postings. Of course, if you got your membership nailed down (no cost, lots of advantages) you could search back on your postings (not those as "GUEST").

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Marcus Campus Bellorum
Date: 22 Aug 00 - 11:55 PM

HI Bob,

I am a bonafide member for the moment.

PM should be easier but "how the bloody hell do ya do it"?

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 12:02 AM

G'day again Mark,

I forgot to say they I will probably see you all in Tursacan at the Loaded Dog Folk Club, Annandale, in a week and a half ... and then I will probably be passing through Canberra early in September to talk with the National Library of Australian, Film and Sound Archive about a 3-CD release of archival material from the '50s.

This will be a new CD of material from John Meredith's 1980s field collections, a re-release of material from his 1950s work (already released on cassette by Carrawobbity Publications) and a compilation of (original Bushwhackers and Rambleers tracks, released on 78 rpm records in the 1950s by Wattle recordings. Anyway, I may get a chance to call in; first or second week, before I head for a bunker in the middle of Australia for the duration of the damned Olympics!

Regard(les)s,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Marcus Campus Bellorum
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 12:13 AM

It appears there are seven tunes for "Travelling down the Castlereigh" but this is probably a good point to start a new thread. I will keep looking and get back.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 07:10 AM

Please forgive the thread creep, but maybe somebody can help.

I heard an Australian song I really liked some years ago on a local radio station in Luxembourg of all places. It was a whaling song, the gist of which was to forget about going after cissy stuff like herring and cod and to join up and go after whales.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Arthur O'Malley

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bert
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 04:46 PM

My Mother told me that 'The Thing' was a clean derivative of 'The Chandler's Wife', when Billy Cotton sang it in the late Forties.

And I heard the 'dog' story told as a joke way before 1950, probably around 1944 because it was before we were evacuated. Of course we were small kids then so the dogs were looking for 'their bottoms'.

Bert.

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 23 Aug 00 - 09:14 PM

Hi Bob,

See you at the Dog. Would you be able to bring a selection of The Bush Music Club CDs and Books along with you?

We would like to begin a small libary of Bush Music material (to add to my mountain of internet printed material).

If you have any prints of those new CDs mentioned above we'd like one of those .

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 12:14 AM

G'day Arthur O'Malley,

That sounds very like Harry Robertson's song Ballina Whalers which has the chorus:
Heigh ho ye trawler men come on, forget the schnapper and the prawns,
It's out of Ballina we'll sail, a'fishing for the hump-backed whale.

I have just been digging through my 1972 copy of Harry's Songs of Whale-chasing Men, having heard an appalling desecration of this song at the Australian Folk Festival at Kiama, over the Queen's Birthday weekend in June. Apart from getting the Australian names wrong, the tune was a banal English effort, with none of the charm and colour of Harry's originals, drawn on his Scottish upbringing.

I got up sheet music for four of his songs for my music workshop last week and could not help noticing the variety of modes: one major, one minor, one Doriam and one Myxolydian! (BTW: Just to keep my conscience a little clearer on the subject of whaling, now fortunately banned - except for Japan's scientific experiment to see how many whales they can slaughter before someone sees through their subterfuge -I also included Eric Bogle's magnificent Song of the Whale an interesting Scottish/Australian counterpoint with another very Scottish Myxolydian tune.)

I could post the words and a MIDIText of the real tune, if you wish. (Sourced, of course, from the Victorian Folk Music Club's 1970 Tradition Magazine, not the Alberts Publication 1972 songbook that threatens to come round and repossess the house if I so much as write the words on a blackboard!)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 05:37 AM

Thanks Bob,

I'd appreciate that very much, not that I'd be able to tell a myxolydian from a melodeon.

Of what era is/was Harry Robertson, and is the Ballina of the song in Queensland or somewhere else?

Please forgive my ignorance,

Arthur O'Malley

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Wolfgang
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 05:59 AM

Arthur,
we had Harry Robertson mentioned in some old thread (I entered the name in the DigiTrad and Forum search). I have not read all old threads, but I found that in about 1980 he was "well over fifty" and in 1999 he was "dead since a few years". Close enough if you only want to know roughly.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 09:02 AM

G'day Arthur,

Harry Robertson grew up in Scotland (~Clyde?), managed an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce Aero engines during WWII, enlisted in the Royal Navy towards the end and served as a junior sub-lieutenant on trawlers in the North Sea, including a lot of moving back liberty ships &c after the war.

He worked on British whalers, out of South Georgia, in the Falkland Islands and then he anfd his wife emmigrated to Australia. He worked in the ship repair industry and also in coastal whaling off the New South Wales and Queensland coasts, during the 1950s. I met him during the 1960s and '70s when he lived in Sydney.

I had a Danish whaler for an uncle - married to my mother's sister. Vik worked in the Central districts as a stockman - mostly - but he occasionally chucked it in and headed down to Sydney to sign on for a 4 month stint in the southern whaling season ... then he would be back on a horse in the Australian outback!

Anyway, I will post the words to Harry's Ballina Whalers to a separate "LYR ADD" thread, to be sure that they are spotted and 'harvested'. I will also add a MIDIText file, but I will send the straight MIDI file to Alan of Oz for adding to the MIDI site, which is the easiest way to hear how a tune sounds.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST,Airto
Date: 24 Aug 00 - 11:42 AM

Thanks Bob and Wolfgang,

I appreciate your help. I also had a look at the Humpbacked Whale thread and meandered through a few more related ones as well. I see that I'm not exactly the first person around here to have been helped on their way by the pair of you.

All the best,

Arthur

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 25 Aug 00 - 12:06 AM

G'day Bert,

Very interesting to hear these datings: if "...'The Thing' was a clean derivative of 'The Chandler's Wife', when Billy Cotton sang it in the late Forties." and you "heard the 'dog' story told as a joke way before 1950, probably around 1944 because it was before we were evacuated..." it gives some order to the events.

If Meredith's informant is right, his (alleged) poem dates to some time well before Lawson's death in 1922. If The Chandler's Wife was sung with the "Boom, boom, boom" device it may be the source of that aspect - spread around the world in the innocuous form of The Thing. Of course, The Chandler's Wife is a sailor's song and could turn up anywhere in the world - especially a country like Australia where everyone arrived by boat.

It would be good to know if the boom, booms were part of the tradition from which Meredith collected in the 1950s. This would tell whether they drew on The Thing or on older versions of The Chandler's Wife. I will ask him, if I see him in Holbrook next month. At 80, he has retired down there to the family home, a bit more than halfway down to Melbourne.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Snuffy
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 05:01 AM

Bob,

You say the Chandler's Wife is a sailor's song - are you assuming that it's a Ship's Chandler? I've always assumed that it was an ordinary chandler (i.e. candle-maker).

Until gas lighting became common in Victorian times, candles were the main source of lighting, but chandlery was a dying trade by 1900. I would have put the Chandler's Wife as a 19th century urban version of the earlier farm-based Rap-Tap-Tap.

But I have no hard evidence to support this, apart from the "feel" of the songs themselves. Can anybody provide any history on these two?

Wassail! V

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Chris/Darwin
Date: 26 Aug 00 - 08:22 AM

This has been an interesting thread. A couple of points - Pam and Norm Merrigan had a bush band in the 80's called "The Bush Bandicoots". It included the great and late Wagga percussionist/story teller/character Ted Simpson, and a fiddle player whose name escapes me. They won the national bush band competition in Tamworth about 1986.

Of course, Harry Robertson's song about whaling off Ballina (NSW North Coast) was recorded by Nic Jones on "Penguin Eggs" under the banner of "The Humpback Whale". I like both versions.

Regards Chris

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Percustard
Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:36 PM

Hi all,

Tursacan found a version of "Billygoat Overland", and fused it with "The Dogs Meeting". It was fun putting it all together but didnt really "cut it" in performances. So that medley wont be on our CD.

We are, however, still looking for the history and a celtic link for the Australian tune "Travelling Down the Castlereigh" which of course is linked to Basil Cosgrove's "The Rabbit Trapper's Song".

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: Percustard
Date: 17 Jun 02 - 09:39 PM

A new thread may be in order for

Celtic origins of the Oz tune "Travelling Down the Castlereigh"

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: pavane
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 08:12 AM

There is a copy of The Chandler's Wife in the Bodleian Ballad library - 19th C but unfortunately undated.

(It contains the Rap Tap Tap line)

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Jul 02 - 02:14 PM

I'm glad that I've lived long enough to read the line,"Vermilionize the bars". It is definitely one of those,I wish I'd said that, moments.
Thank-you....Giok

Subject: RE: Great Australian Folk Song
From: GUEST
Date: 03 May 07 - 12:42 AM

I was drunk in South India in 1988 when a drunken Indian friend began to sing this song to the tune of "A Church's One Foundation" I was stunned and very nearly died laughing..... the context, the context....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk
From: GUEST,Derek Davis
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 11:02 PM

"One Foundation" was the tune I heard Bryan Bowers use more than once for "The Dogs' Party." If I remember rightly, he credited Greg Brown with the song, so I guess that's where he picked it up.

Bowers liked to imagine singing it from the choir.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Dogs' Meeting: great Australian folk song
From: GUEST,Guest. David Jones
Date: 20 Jul 07 - 02:43 AM

First heard The Dogs Meeting sung to the tune for The Church has One Foundation at the Philladelphia Folk Festival in the 1970s. It also got adapted by Roberts and Barrand to the tune for the White Cockade. See the song printed out in the White Cockade format in Lyrics and Knowledge under the heading, Dogs Meeting.
David Jones