“All human beings not utterly savage long for some information
about past times, and are delighted by narratives which
present pictures to the eye of the mind. But it is only in
very enlightened communities that books are readily accessible.
Metrical composition, therefore, which, in a highly
civilised nation, is a mere luxury, is in nations imperfectly
civilised almost a necessity of life, and is valued less on
account of the pleasure which it gives to the ear than on
account of the help which it gives to the memory. A man who
can invent or embellish an interesting story and put it into a
form which others may easily retain in their recollection
will always be highly esteemed by a people eager for amusement
and information, but destitute of libraries. Such is the
origin of ballad poetry, a species of composition which
scarcely ever fails to spring up and flourish in every society
at a certain point in the progress towards refinement.”—
Macaulay.
Australia’s history is so short, and her progress has been so
wonderfully rapid, that, seeing things as they are to-day, it is
hard to believe that among us still are men who can remember
the days when convicts in irons tramped the streets of
Sydney, and it was unsafe to go to and from Sydney and Parramatta
without an armed escort; who were partakers of the
roaring days of the diggings when miners lit their pipes with
five-pound notes and shod their horses with gold; who have
exchanged shots with Gilbert and Morgan, and have watched
the lumbering police of the old days scouring the country to
earn the thousand pounds reward on the head of Ben Hall.
So far as materials for ballads go, the first sixty or seventy
years of our history are equal to about three hundred years
of the life of an old and settled nation. The population of
the country comprised a most curious medley. Among the
early settlers were some of the most refined and educated,
and some of the most ignorant, people on the face of the earth.
Among the assisted immigrants and currency lads of the
earlier days education was not a strong point; and such
newspapers as there were could not be obtained by one-half
of the population, and could not be read by a very large
percentage of the other half. It is no wonder, then, that the
making of ballads flourished in Australia just as it did in
England, Scotland, and Ireland in the days before printing
was in common use. And it was not only in the abundance
of matter that the circumstances of the infant Colony were
favourable to ballad-making. The curious upheavals of
Australian life had set the Oxford graduate carrying his swag
and cadging for food at the prosperous homestead of one
who could scarcely write his name; the digger, peeping out
of his hole—like a rabbit out of his burrow—at the license
hunters, had, perhaps, in another clime charmed cultivated
audiences by his singing and improvisation; the bush was
full of ne’er-do-wells—singers and professional entertainers
and so on—who had “come to grief” and had to take to hard
work to earn a crust to carry them on until they could
“strike a new patch.” No wonder that, with all this talent
to hand, songs and ballads of a rough sort were plentiful
enough.
Most of these songs, even in the few years that they have
been extant, have developed three or four different readings,
and not only have the ballads been altered, but many of them
have been forgotten altogether. Only one very imperfect
song has come to hand dealing directly with the convict days,
but there must have been many ballads composed and sung
by the prisoners—ballads in which the horrors of Port
Arthur in Tasmania, the grim, grey prisons of Norfolk
Island, the curse of official tyranny, and the humours of the
rum traffic had their share. Possibly some lost singer of
convictdom poured out his regrets in words straight from the
soul, and produced a song worthy to rank as a classic: but
all the songs of that day have been mercifully allowed to
drift into oblivion; and their singers, with their grey clothes
and their fetters, have gone clanking down to the limbo of
forgotten things.
The collection begins with two aboriginal songs. These
songs were supplied by Mr. S. M. Mowle, a very old
colonist, with much experience of the blacks fifty years ago.
He writes—“I could never find out what the words meant,
and I don’t think the blacks themselves knew.” Other
authorities, however, say that the blacks’ songs were very
elaborate, and that they composed corroborees which reached
a high dramatic level. The question is of interest, and might
be worth investigation.
It is interesting to see how the progress of settlement is
reflected in the various songs. Beginning with the crude
early days, when there was land and to spare, and when
labour was in demand and Australia was terra incognita to
all, we find in “Paddy Malone” a fitting chronicle in rhyme.
In this ballad a raw, Irish immigrant tells of his adventures
in the Australian bush. He was put to shepherding and
bullock-driving, which in itself proves that labourers were at
a premium, and that instead of a man having to hunt for a
job the job had to hunt for the man. He lost his sheep, and
the bullocks got away from him. It will be noticed that
there is no mention of fences or roads in this ballad, as in the
“Paddy Malone” days fences and roads were not very much
met with. Compare also “The Beautiful Land of Australia.”
In this the settler reaches Sydney, and “Upon the map I
chose my land,” which shows that there was land enough and
to spare, and that the system of grants to free immigrants
was in full swing. It is noticeable that in all the ballads of
early days there is a sort of happy-go-lucky spirit which
reflects the easy-come, easy-go style of the times.
Next in order come the ballads of the days when the
squatters had established themselves, and the poorer classes
found it harder to live. “The Squatter’s Man” is a balled
of these harder times. Compare it with “Paddy Malone.”
There is no talk of sending a new-chum out with sheep and
bullocks now. The first rush of settlement is over, and the
haughty squatter contemptuously offers ten shillings a week
as wages to a man for a variety of drudgery that is set out
with much spirit in the song.
Next come the free-selection days, when the runs of these
squatters were thrown open to purchase on certain easy conditions,
and at once the ballads change their tone, and there
is quite a pæan of victory in “The Free Selector—a Song of
1861.” The reader will note that “The Land Bill has passed
and the good time has come,” and further on the singer says
“We may reside
In a home of our own by some clear waterside.”
The squatters also had a word to say, and “The Broken-down
Squatter” puts their side of the case in a sort of
ad misericordiam appeal; while “The Eumerella Shore” is a
smart hit at the cattle-stealers who availed themselves of the
chances afforded by the new state of things in the country.
Later still comes the time when the selectors became
employers of labour, and “The Stringy-bark Cockatoo,”
though rough in style and versification, is a splendid hit at
the new squireens. A “cockatoo,” it should be explained,
is a small settler, and the stringy-bark tree is an unfailing
sign of poor land; and the minstrel was much worse treated
when working for “The Stringy-bark Cockatoo” than when
he was a “Squatter’s man.”
So much for the historical element; now as to the songs
themselves. As metrical compositions they cannot be
expected to rank high. In all her history England has produced
only a few good ballads, and ballads do not get justice
from cold print. An old Scotchman, to whom Sir Walter
Scott read some of his collected ballads, expressed the opinion
that the ballads were spoilt by printing. And these bush
songs, to be heard at their best, should be heard to an
accompaniment of clashing shears when the voice of a shearer
rises through the din caused by the rush and bustle
of a shearing shed, the scrambling of the sheep in their pens,
and the hurry of the pickers-up; or when, on the roads, the
cattle are restless on their camp at night and the man
on watch, riding round them, strikes up “Bold Jack
Donahoo” to steady their nerves a little. Drovers know
that they must not sneak quietly about restless cattle—it is
better to sing to them and let them know that someone is
stirring and watching; and many a mob of wild, pike-horned
Queensland cattle, half inclined to stampede, has listened
contentedly to the “Wild Colonial Boy” droned out in true
bush fashion till the daylight began to break and the mob
was safe for another day. Heard under such circumstances
as these the songs have quite a character of their own. A
great deal depends, too, on the way in which they are sung.
The true bushman never hurries his songs. They are
designed expressly to pass the time on long journeys or
slow, wearisome rides after sheep or tired cattle; so the songs
are sung conscientiously through—chorus and all—and the
last three words of the song are always spoken, never sung.
There is, too, a strong Irish influence in the greater number
of the songs; quite a large proportion are sung to the
tune of the “Wearing of the Green,” and the admixture of
Irish wit and Irish pathos in their composition can only be
brought out by a good singer.
One excuse, if excuse be needed, for the publication of this
collection is the fact that the songs it contains are fast being
forgotten. Thirty or forty years ago every station and every
shearing shed had its singer, who knew some of the bush
songs. Nowadays they are never sung, and even in districts
where they took their rise they have pretty well died out.
Only a few years ago, every shearing shed had at least one
minstrel who could drone out the refrain of a shearing song—
“But, oh, boys, such sheep I never shore,
As those that made us knuckle down at Goorianawa”
But the Goorianawa sheep are not celebrated in song nowadays,
and advertisement has failed to produce a copy of the
song. Down in the rough country near the Upper Murrumbidgee,
where the bushranger Gilbert was betrayed by
a relative and was shot by the police, there was a song about
“Dunn, Gilbert, and Ben Hall” It commenced—
“Come all ye lads of loyalty and listen to my tale,
A story of bushranging days I will to you unveil,
’Tis of those gallant heroes, we’ll bless them one and
all,
And we’ll sit and sing long live the King, Dunn, Gilbert,
and Ben Hall.”