Bluey Brink - see below.

The Albury Ram

This song is actually one of several Australian variants of the English song The Derby Ram, also known as
The Darby Ram, The Albany Ram and The Ram of Dalby. Some versions, including the one I do, are fairly
close to a sea chanty in form.

Many versions of the song have also found their way to America. Folksong collectors, Albert L. Lloyd and Bill Scott believed that it has its roots in pagan fertility ritual. A series of mummers plays are traditionally performed around Derby every year, the highlight of which is the symbolic slaying of the ram, played by a performer covered with a sack through which protrudes a broomstick with a ram's head impaled upon it. The butcher stabs it in the throat and a boy catches the blood in his bowl, an event which is referred to in many versions of the song. The suggestion is that this grew out of some earlier pagan sacrifice ritual?

For more details on the variations of this song see this website.

My rendition is here, and here are the lyrics.

The Ballad Of 1891 (Helen Palmer, Doreen Jacobs)

In 1891 the Queensland pastoralists, known as the squatters, decided to fight against the Shearers Union and try to force an agreement that did away with the eight-hour day. On January 6th, the shearer's rejected this erosion of their newly won conditions, and began a major strike. The scale of the ensuing confrontation is said to be the closest Australia has been to a state of civil war.

The government took the side of the squatters and used police and heavily armed troops to escort large groups of scab labourers through the pickets to the shearing sheds. The strikers set up big bush camps run by elected committees which were used to house the strikers and their organisers throughout the campaign. The arrest of key strike leaders only hardened their resolve and on May 1st, 1500 armed strikers marched through Barcaldine town while the trials of the arrested unionists began in Rockhampton, 12 of them being jailed for conspiracy.

The lyrics of this song were written as a poem in 1950 by Helen Palmer. It was set to music by Doreen Jacobs and soon became an anthem for the workers, who were facing a new bout of anti-union legislation from the conservative Liberal government led by Robert Menzies.

Here is my rendition and the lyrics are here.

The Banks of the Condamine

This ballad was first published as The Banks of the Riverine in The Queenslander in 1894. It is unusual, as there are very few love songs in the Australian folk tradition, probably because, as one writer said, white women in the Australian bush were "as rare as black swans in Europe". There are a number of different versions, in some of which the man is going off to a horse-breaking camp rather than a shearing shed. It is very closely based on an English ballad called Banks of the Nile, from the early 1800s, in which the man is a soldier going away to Egypt "to fight the blacks and heathens" in the Napoleonic Wars. There is also an Irish song called Mary Griffin that uses this tune.

The song was recorded by A.L. Lloyd in the 1950's as the B-side of a 78 rpm recording of Bold Jack Donahue, and on later LPs. It has also been recorded by Trevor Lucas (1966), Martyn Wyndham Read, Glen Tomasetti, Greg Champion and Sandy Denny.

Non-Australians may need the following explanations:

Condamine - a river in southern Queensland

Roma - a southern Queensland town

mustering - rounding up of sheep or cattle

squatters - members of established families who occupied the best land - usually ahead of official Government clearance to settle an area - and were granted long term leases at favourable rates by their mates in Parliament.

selectors - farmers who took up a plot of government land for a low deposit under the "Land Selection Acts" of the 1860s. These were generally poorer and often recent arrivals to the country.

whippin' side - the last side of the sheep to be shorn

tally - the number of sheep shorn by a shearer in a day's work

ringer - the champion shearer of a shearing shed (i.e. the one who gets the highest tally)

moleskins - pants of heavy, closely-woven cotton cloth worn by stockmen to protect them from the weather and harsh outback conditions

ram-stag - an inferior fully-grown male sheep that somehow missed being castrated, and had to be slaughtered to avoid lowering the quality of the flock. The meat was tough and unsavory and considered to be “fit for shearers' consumption only.”

jumbuck - a sheep that's hard to shear because it is large or wild

Here is my rendition of this song, and here are the lyrics.

Bluey Brink

A tall story from the Australian bush. Shearers had to be tough.

The song is often sung to the tune of Villikins and His Dinah, a melody which is probably used for more songs than any other, though, in the version I know, the tune is barely recognisable as Villikins. It has been recorded by Trevor Lucas and A. A. Lloyd (accompanied by Peggy Seeger).

You can see my performance at the top of the page, and also a live performance at a session of the Hong Kong Folk Society in The Canny Man. The lyrics are here.

This song is on my first CD: AXIS OF EVIL and other True Stories.

Brisbane Ladies

This Australian song, originally known as The Drover, is one of many adaptations of the seaman's song, Spanish Ladies. It is believed to have been written by Saul Mendelsohn, a storekeeper in Nanango, who died in 1879. The place names used in the song were part of the route that cattle drovers used when returning from Brisbane to the cattle station at Augathella, in west-central Queensland and include Toowong, Caboolture, Kilcoy, Collington's Hut, Blackbutt, Bob Williamson's paddock, Taromeo, Yarraman Creek, Nanango and Toomancie.

This version is based on the singing of A.L.Lloyd, in particular the fourth verse which did not appear in the original.

Here is me singing this song, and here are the lyrics.

Click go the Shears

This is the best known Australian shearing song, and probably the best known Australian folk song after Waltzing Matilda. Its authorship is unknown but it was obviously written as a parody of Ring the Bell, Watchman, (1865) by Henry Clay Work, who is better known for his song Grandfather's Clock. There is also a Welsh song to this tune, called Twill Back y Clo.

Glossary

ringer: fastest shearer in the shed, who gets the biggest pay cheque

blue-bellied Joe: sheep with completely-shaved belly

tar: antiseptic ointment for cuts.

Here is a recording of the song by Burl Ives.

My performance is here and the lyrics are here.

Cockies of Bungaree

An old Australian ballad about the troubles of a farmhand working for an impoverished farmer. A "cockatoo," or "cockie", was a small settler. Bungaree is sixteen kilometres east of Ballarat in Victoria.

If this were a Child ballad it would have the same number as the earlier song Stringy Bark Cockatoo, which was included in Paterson's Old Bush Songs (1906). This version was collected by Norm O'Connor from Simon McDonald of Creswick, Victoria. The version sung by A. L. Lloyd is much closer to the story of Stringy Bark Cockatoo (See below). The song has also been recorded by The Clancy Brothers.

Here is my performance of the song. The lyrics are here.

The Drover's Dream

I remember singing this song at primary school back in the 1950s. An unusually whimsical song compared to the usual rough bush ballads. It features a lot of flora and fauna unique to Australia.

My performance is here and here are the lyrics.

Flash Jack from Gundagai

A popular Australian shearing song, which Banjo Paterson included in his 1905 collection of old bush ballads. There seems to be a tradition in Australian songs of listing all the exotic places known to the protagonist. Another example may be seen in the convict ballad, Moreton Bay.

You can see my performance. The lyrics are here.

Lachlan Tigers

The Lachlan river runs through some of the best sheep raising areas of western New South Wales. This song pays tribute to the skills of the big gun shearers who came to the region to practice their trade.

According to Duke Tritton, calling for tar was not actually shouted out very loudly, as it showed the shearer had accidentally cut the sheep. The tar was used to stop the bleeding.

The tune is from the Scottish song Musselburgh Fair, and is also used for The Station Cook and The Great Northern Line.

This version of the song is based on the singing of A.L.Lloyd, from his recording of The Old Bush Ballads. It has also been recorded by Danny Spooner and various bush bands.

Here is my video of the song, and here are the lyrics.

Lime Juice Tub

This is a shearers song that pokes fun at newcomers who think they know how to shear a sheep, but actually don't have a clue. The first known print version appeared in The Bulletin in 1898 using the title, The Whaler's Rhyme. Collector and singer, A. L. Lloyd, heard it while working on the Lachlan River in the early 1930s. He wrote that "this song was much sung in the woolsheds while the men were actually shearing."

A "lime juice tub" is a British ship.

Here is my rendition of the song, and here are the lyrics.

Now I'm Easy (Eric Bogle)

This song is on my first CD, Axis of Evil and Other True Stories.

You can see my performance and the lyrics are here.

The Old Bullock Dray

There are many versions of this song. I believe this is one of the earliest versions.

Some notes of explanation may be needed, especially for non-Australians:

Paddy-melon (actually pademelon): A wallaby (thylogale spp) The aboriginal name happens to sound something like these two English words.

Depot: The Women's Convict Prison at Parramatta. Women convicts arriving in the colony on minor charges (eg, theft of a blanket to care for their family) would be housed at Parramatta until assigned to a colonist as servant. Any free settler could apply for a female servant or, in a colony short of women, a wife. Marriages could be held on the spot if necessary.

Barramundies: An excellent fish of the northern inland rivers.

Damper: A type of bread. Dough is wrapped around a stick and cooked in a camp oven or in the coals of a campfire.

Leatherjacket: A kind of roughly made pancake.

Stringybark: Common local eucalypt, with tough timber good for makeshift farm buildings.

Greenhide: Rawhide. Untanned leather., used for primitive building, repairs and development.

Jack Robertson: New South Wales politician who opened up small holdings for "Free Selectors", who could "select" Government land and pay for it in installments while carrying out specified clearing and improvements. The bullocky plans to provide a whole generation of such farmers.

Here is my video of the song, and here are the lyrics.

The Queensland Drover

This song, published as early as 1865 in The Queenslanders' New Colonial Fire Song Book, is also known as The Overlander. It was included in Banjo Paterson's Old Bush Songs and has been recorded by A.L.Lloyd, though this version is closer to that sung by John Manifold.

I first heard this song on the landmark Australian folk album Moreton Bay and Other Songs, Mainly of Convict Origin, which Peter Mann records brought out in 1963, with Martyn Wyndham-Read, Brian Mooney and David Lumsden, the first two being the most popular singers on the Australian folk scene of the sixties. This was one of the few songs performed by the three singers as a group.

You can see and hear me singing the song, and the lyrics are here.

Rocking the Cradle

Like many Australian songs this one was originally from Ireland where it is also known as Baby Lie Easy. A.L. Lloyd sang it on his album "First Person", accompanied by Alf Edwards on concertina and Dave Swarbrick on fiddle. It has also been recorded by Isla Cameron and by Trevor Lucas as A Wee One on his album "Overlander". Buffy-Sainte Marie does an interesting version called Old Man's Lament on her album It's My Way.

Here are A.L. Lloyd's comments from the sleeve notes of his album:

It seems to have begun life in Ireland, originally perhaps a lullaby purporting to be sung to the Christ Child by disgruntled Joseph (in mystery plays and carols Joseph is often presented as a dour peasant very suspicious of the parentage of his wife's baby). It has undergone many changes, as a cowboy song in the USA and a mildly bawdy piece among students everywhere in the English-speaking world, besides flourishing in a number of variants (mostly deriving from the same broadside print) among folk singers. Our version here is substantially that sung by an outstanding Australian traditional singer, Mrs Sally Sloane of Teralba, New South Wales. Mrs Sloane has a large stock of family songs, many of them inherited from her grandmother who came to Australia from County Kerry in the 1840's, but Rocking the Cradle is not one of those, for she learnt it in her young days from a neighbour in the small-farming country around Parkes. She begins the song: “I am a young man cut down in my blossom.” I altered it to “I am a young man from the town of Kiandra” because I knew a Kiandra fellow whose plight was similar to that of the man in the song.

Here is my rendition of the song, and here are the lyrics.

Ryebuck Shearer

This popular Australian folk song was collected from Jac Luscombe in 1953 by John Meredith.

A "ryebuck shearer" is an expert shearer, usually expected to shear a hundred sheep in a day (known as a century).
This usually referred specifically to the "ringer," the best shearer in the shed.

Here is me singing this song, and here are the lyrics.

Said Hanrahan (by John O'Brien)

We'll all be rooned!
This is Australian poet John O'Brien's classic study of the perfect pessimist.
John O'Brien was the nom de plume of Patrick Joseph Hartigan (1878-1952), born in Yass, New South Wales. He was
a Roman Catholic priest in the Goulburn diocese and later parish priest at Narrandera. All these are also rural towns in
New South Wales.

The following notes are by William Grey:

"Said Hanrahan" paints a wonderful portrait of Australian-Irish bush culture, together with its church, the land, the
climate and the seasons which constitute its core. Hanrahan (a quintessentially Irish name) expresses
unconquerable Irish pessimism about the prospects down on the farm. (Hanrahan has a point however: the lush
growth from spring rain can indeed dry out into fuel which poses a serious fire risk in summer.)

"Said Hanrahan", I think, is readily accessible to non-Australians but here are a couple of notes:

• 'rooned' is Australian-Irish pronunciation of 'ruined';
• 'never since the banks went broke' refers to the turbulent 1890s which were bad drought years and also when (in the absence of a central bank) nearly all the land banks and building societies and 12 of the 22 trading banks went broke, following the collapse of an intense property boom.
• 'Back-o'-Bourke' is an Australian colloquialism for being just about anywhere in the vast and sparsely populated heartland of bush Australia;
• 'every creek a banker ran' means that the rivers overflowed.

"Said Hanrahan" was published in Around the Boree Log and Other Verses (1921)

Here is my rendition and the lyrics are here.

The Stockman's Last Bed

Also known as The Stockman's Lament, this ballad was first published in 1865, in The Queensland Native Companion Songster. Banjo Paterson included it in his collection, Old Bush Songs (1906).

I first heard it sung by American singer, Burl Ives, on a 78 recording. It is one of the songs I grew up with.

You can see my performance and here are the lyrics.

The Stringybark Cockatoo

An old Australian ballad about the troubles of a farmhand working for an impoverished farmer. A "cockatoo," or "cockie", was a small settler, and the reference to the stringy-bark tree is an indication of very poor farming land.

This song was included in Banjo Paterson's Old Bush Songs (1906). There is a later version of the song called Cockies of Bungaree (See above).

You can see my performance and read the lyrics.

A Thousand Miles Away

Banjo Paterson included this in his Old Bush Songs. It is based on an earlier convict song called Ten Thousand Miles Away, and uses the same tune, but with new lyrics about pastoral Australia. It has been attributed to C. A. Flower, who was the accountant for the company building the railway line between Mitchell and Roma in Queensland.

Notes:
The technique for exporting frozen meat was developed in Australia in the late nineteenth century.

Nardoo (mersilia) is a clover-like fern that is highly drought-resistant.

You can see my performance and read the lyrics.

Travelling Down the Castlereagh (Banjo Paterson)

This militant unionist ballad was written as a poem by the great Australian bush poet, Banjo Paterson, and published in the Bulletin in 1892 under the name The Bushman's Song. It has been sung to various tunes, but the one collected by John Manifold, is the most common.

Jack London described scabs as follows: "When God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which he made a scab.... the modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, his country, his wife, his children, and his fellow men for an unfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporation."

In fact a lot of the "scabs" who broke the shearers' strikes were Chinese immigrants who came for the gold rush, and subsequently tried to earn a living however they could. In the interests of political correctness, the original line "nine or ten dashed Chinamen" was at some stage changed to "nine or ten non-union men."

I first learnt this song when I was invited by Phil Cleary (well-known Australian footballer, writer and left-wing politician) to sing some songs to his history students. He supplied the songs, some of which I knew already, and I had to learn and sing them as part of a unit on Australian History.

Apparently Ewan MacColl wrote The Fitter's Song to the tune of this song, but it must have been one of the other tunes, as it doesn't sound like this one.

You can hear me sing it here. The lyrics are here.

Wallaby Stew (Cecil Poole)

This is generally considered a traditional Australian song but it was originally written by Cecil Poole in 1897, under the title When Dad Comes Out of Gaol and published in The Bulletin. The tune is that used by A. L. Lloyd who heard it while working on the Lachlan around 1930. According to Lloyd the tune was well-known to seamen as the melody to a shanty called According to the Act.

Here is my performance of the song, and the lyrics are here.