By A. B. Paterson.
* "There is no mistaking the vigour of Mr. Paterson's verse;
there is no difficulty in feeling the strong human interest
which moves in it."
* "Every way worthy of the man who ranks with the first of Australian poets."
* "At once naturalistic and imaginative, and racy without being slangy,
the poems have always a strong human interest of every-day life
to keep them going. They make a book which should give an equal pleasure
to simple and to fastidious readers."
* "Now and again a deeper theme, like an echo from the older,
more experienced land, leads him to more serious singing, and proves that
real poetry is, after all, universal. It is a hearty book."
* "Mr. Paterson has powerful and varied sympathies,
coupled with a genuine lyrical impulse, and some skill,
which makes his attempts always attractive and usually successful."
* "These are all entertaining, their rough and ready wit
and virility of expression making them highly acceptable,
while the dash of satire gives point to the humour."
* "He catches the bush in its most joyous moments, and writes of it
with the simple charm of an unaffected lover."
* "Will be welcome to that too select class at home who follow
the Australian endeavour to utter a fresh and genuine poetic voice."
* "Mr. Paterson now proves beyond question that Australia has produced
at least one singer who can voice in truest poetry the aspirations
and experiences peculiar to the Commonwealth, and who is to be ranked
with the foremost living poets of the motherland."
* "Fine, swinging, stirring stuff, that sings as it goes along.
The subjects are capital, and some of the refrains haunt one.
There is always room for a book of unpretentious, vigorous verse
of this sort."
* "These ballads make bright and easy reading; one takes up the book,
and, delighted at the rhythm, turns page after page,
finding entertainment upon each."
Biographical Note:
Andrew Barton Paterson was born at Narambla, in New South Wales, on 17
February 1864, but grew up at Buckenbah and Illalong. He became a lawyer
but devoted much of his time to writing, and gained popularity
especially for his poetry and ballads. His best known poems are The Man
from Snowy River (1892) on which a motion picture was loosely based, and
Waltzing Matilda (1895) which slowly became an Australian symbol and
national song. The poems he wrote for a Sydney newspaper led him into
reporting, and he went to South Africa to cover the Boer War. Always a
fair man, he had his doubts about the war and was a little too vocal
about it for the tastes of some of his readers. During the First World
War he served in Egypt as a Major in a Remount Unit, training horses for
the war. This fit one of his main interests in life -- horses --a
preoccupation which is very evident in his poems, and even in his choice
of pseudonym --"The Banjo" was a race-horse.
The works for which Paterson is famous were mostly written before the
First World War, and are collected in three books of poems, The Man from
Snowy River and Other Verses (1895), Rio Grande's Last Race and Other
Verses (1902), and Saltbush Bill, J.P. and Other Verses (1917). His
prose works include An Outback Marriage (1906), and Three Elephant Power
and Other Stories (1917), the latter of which is a collection of tall
tales and serious (but often humourous) reporting. In fact, above all
else it is perhaps Paterson's sense of humour that sets him apart from
such balladists as Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service. It should also be
noted that Paterson was writing his ballads before either of these
became well-known, and there was little, if any, influence from either
side. More likely, Paterson was influenced by the Scottish tradition of
poetry (Paterson was of Scottish descent) which had been popularized in
Australia by Adam Lindsay Gordon and others. Banjo Paterson died of a
heart attack on 5 February, 1941.
A. Light, 1995.