Tune Req: Bush Christening

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: GUEST,Sytonic
Date: 01 May 12 - 07:32 AM

There is a version sung by the "Nick Erby Show in 1981, on the release of Wallis and Matilda's second album "The Old Australian Ways". Which has been posted on YouTube

They seem to put it together quite well, can anyone with an ear pick out the chords?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 11:30 AM

Sorry, I thought that this thread was about George Bush - I was hoping that after his "Christening" he might show signs of growing up !

Subject: ADD: The Last Parade (A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson)
From: Teribus
Date: 07 Feb 03 - 05:06 AM

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the info above.

For those of you who are not familiar with it I supply the words of "The Last Parade", a poem I referred to in my post above.

The Last Parade - Andrew Barton Paterson

THE LAST PARADE
A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson

With never a sound of trumpet,
With never a flag displayed,
The last of the old campaigners
Lined up for the last parade.

Weary they were and battered,
Shoeless, and knocked about;
From under their ragged forelocks
Their hungry eyes looked out.

And they watched as the old commander
Read out, to the cheering men,
The Nation's thanks and the orders
To carry them home again.

And the last of the old campaigners,
Sinewy, lean, and spare --
He spoke for his hungry comrades:
`Have we not done our share?

`Starving and tired and thirsty
We limped on the blazing plain;
And after a long night's picket
You saddled us up again.

`We froze on the wind-swept kopjes
When the frost lay snowy-white.
Never a halt in the daytime,
Never a rest at night!

`We knew when the rifles rattled
From the hillside bare and brown,
And over our weary shoulders
We felt warm blood run down,

`As we turned for the stretching gallop,
Crushed to the earth with weight;
But we carried our riders through it --
Carried them p'raps too late.

`Steel! We were steel to stand it --
We that have lasted through,
We that are old campaigners
Pitiful, poor, and few.

`Over the sea you brought us,
Over the leagues of foam:
Now we have served you fairly
Will you not take us home?

`Home to the Hunter River,
To the flats where the lucerne grows;
Home where the Murrumbidgee
Runs white with the melted snows.

`This is a small thing surely!
Will not you give command
That the last of the old campaigners
Go back to their native land?'

. . . . .

They looked at the grim commander,
But never a sign he made.
`Dismiss!' and the old campaigners
Moved off from their last parade.


This of course predates Eric's song by the best part of a century. Another odd coincidence is that Elijah Conn's horse that features in Eric's song is called 'Banjo'. A. B. Paterson's nickname was Banjo, a nickname he assumed from the name of his horse.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 08:35 AM

G'day Teribus,

A Bushman's Song, by Paterson is well known in Australia - generally called Travelling Down the Castlereagh. It is, of course, described as a song ... and works well as one. A lot of people contend that this isn't "really" one of Banjo's poems ... well, he did collect and re-publish - and this appears first in the context of a story ... so that may be so (but Paterson gets a rather unfair reputation as a toff!).

I can't place the singer in Scotland ... but she probably did the Wallis & Matilda "Clancy" - it is pretty well known.

Paterson was in a very strong place to write a poem on the same theme as Wee Eric's As If He Knows. He went to WW I as a "remount Officer" - a contractor supplying fresh horses to replace worn out, lost or killed mounts. He must have felt the pain of the decision (to preserve quarantine and freedom from many equine diseases, here in Australia) to leave the horses behind - or shoot them - a thousand times over!

BTW: When Wee Eric left Sydney many years back - to live in cheaper Adelaide ... on the dubious returns of songwriting ... I presented him with a Sterling silver fob ornament, which (after slight emendment with my burin) now read: E. Bogle, Castlereagh!

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Teribus
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 04:11 AM

Hi there Bob,

I agree that Paterson's poems, in general, are better as poems. The one's I sing are "The Bushman's Tale", which Hamish Imlach sang under the title "Castlereagh" (SP?), I also adapted and put a tune to "The Ballad of Old Mongrel Grey" and "The Swagman's Rest".

There was a Australian lass, about eight years ago, playing and singing around the north-east of Scotland who did quite a lot of Paterson's and Lawson's stuff - she did "Clancy of the Overflow", wonder if it was the same one that you do?

Recently, heard an Eric Bogle song entitled "As if he Knows", about the Australian Lighthorse's horses in Palestine at the end of the First World War. It is written from the perspective of the men and their sorrow and regret at having to destroy their horses, as they could not repatriate them. Paterson wrote a similar poem written from the horses perspective called "The Last Parade", that poem relates to the end of the Boer War. "The Last Parade" would translate into a song equally as good as Eric Bogles.

All the best,

Teribus.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Hrothgar
Date: 06 Feb 03 - 02:46 AM

Quite right, Bob. Should be recited.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 09:45 PM

G'day Alice, Teribus,

The Bush Christening is one poem I would never think of singing - there is far too much poetry and humour in it to lock it to fixed tune! In general Banjo Paterson's poems like to stay as poems - whereas Henry Lawson's seem to cry out for tunes and this is a good example of this tendency.

"Ian Wallis's Band" would be Wallis and Matilda ... an obvious pun on one of Banjo's poems to which they did not fit the tune. I've seen them performing in recent years at AFFaK: the Australian Folk Festival at Kiama ... until the Kiama Council decided to demolish the venue - the Kiama sportsground stadium and build (yet another) tourist restaurant (... and then stuffed up their own application to themselves to do it!).

Their setting of Clancy of the Overflow is the only one I've really used. I don't think I have any books of their settings, but I'll check tonight. If no one comes up with this setting, I'll check with Dave De Santi, who directed AFFaK - and runs its successor at Albion Park, to see if I can dig up a contact.

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Feb 03 - 10:11 AM

Noted at the footnotes supplied in the link that there is a reference to Ian Wallis's Band. Anybody know if any of their recordings are currently available - love both Paterson and Lawson's poems/songs/stories, I've put a couple of them to music myself, but there are loads I'd love to do.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: MMario
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 01:30 PM

I've had people swear they've heard it sung - but it is one of the "missing tunes"

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Sorcha
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 01:24 PM

Does it even have a tune? I thought it was a poem.

Subject: Tune Req: Bush Christening
From: Alice
Date: 04 Feb 03 - 11:35 AM

I searched the forum and could not find the tune for "A Bush Christening". Can someone link to or post it?

A Bush Christening, lyrics in DT

Alice