Australian Bush Ballads – Edited By Douglas Stewart And Nancy Keesing

ACTE LIAL & apn YS T Will H. Ogilvie O wuo was it saddled White Star last night, And who was it saddled White Star? You can read his track to the rails and back And down the creek ever so far. O, moonlight is lovers’ light, Somebody knows, And witch-time the season to woo, And down in the bend where the kurrajong grows The tracks have been trodden by two!

O, who was it galloped White Star last night, When gold stars jewelled the sky? You can see the brand of saddle and band In sweat that is clotted and dry. O, Somebody raced, with the world asleep, To a tryst that Somebody knew, And over the blue-grass fetlock-deep The white hoofs scattered the dew! O, who was it fastened White Star last night To a bough of the kurrajong-tree?

The deep-set grooves of his restless hooves Are there for the world to see. O, Somebody left him for true love’s sake, And Somebody left him long, For horses may hunger and bridles break When true love fashions her song! O, who was it fondled White Star last night When Somebody whispered adieu, And plaited the grey of his mane in a way That never those grey locks grew?

And who was it bent from his saddle-bow To the plea of an upturned face, While down in the bend where the kurrajongs grow The world stood still for a space? O, the lover who saddled White Star last night It is very easy to guess, For his face is bright with a new-found light And a joy that his eyes confess. O, Somebody met in the moonlight snow Someone that cared to be kissed, And the veriest dolt in the world may know Who rode to the moonlight tryst!

WHO’S BIDDING OLD HARLEOQUINENGO We Harry Morant (“The Breaker”) TueEy are mustering cattle on Brigalow Vale Where the stock-horses whinny and stamp, And where long Andy Ferguson, you may go bail, Is yet boss on a cutting-out camp.

The editors’ particular thanks are due to the trustees of the Mitchell Library, Sydney; to the Bulletin Newspaper Company; to the research departments of the Sydney and Melbourne public lib- raries; and to Messrs M. H. Ellis and W. E. Fitz Henry, Dr George Mackaness, Messrs J. K. Moir, W. Stone, T. R. Tyrrell, and R. Ward, and the Rev. Dr Percy Jones, Thanks are also due to Mr W. E. Harney and other correspondents, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/australianbushba0000nanc Pope Ge THE purpose of this anthology is to preserve and present in the compact array of a single volume the Australian bush ballad of the nineties.

In period the selection ranges from the eighteen-sixties to the present day, but the core of it lies in that central period when, after the stimulus of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the ballad came to its full flower in the works of “Banjo” Paterson, Will Ogilvie, Henry Lawson, Barcroft Boake, and many others. To keep the anthology to this one clear statement it was necessary, of course, to make certain vast omissions.

In the first place, a line—roughly of time, roughly of style and flavour—had to be drawn between these compara- tively sophisticated ballads and the sub-soil of primitive immigrant and convict songs and ballads from which, in part, they sprang. All the early colonial material collected by Paterson for his Old Bush Songs, with such additional songs and ballads as later research has discovered, has been left for a projected companion to the present volume. It is not the intention here to present the ticket-of-leave man triumphantly bellowing over his pannikin of rum the naive and uproarious challenge of “The Wild Colonial Boy”: “Surrender now, Jack Doolan, you see there’s three to one.

Surrender now, Jack Doolan, you daring highwayman.” He drew a pistol from his belt and waved the little toy, “Tl fight but not surrender!” said the Wild Colonial Boy… but rather “Banjo” Paterson, who, bushman though he was at heart and in origin, became a city lawyer and newspaperman, distilling for a much later audience, of the city as well as of the outback, the romance of horsemanship and droving: Now Saltbush Bill was a drover tough, as ever the country knew, He had fought his way on the Great Stock Routes from the sea to the big Barcoo.

In the second place, apart from the inevitable limitation of space, much of the material available within the period of the anthology had to be omitted. Since the selection was to be of the bush, all ballads of the streets, of larrikins or of the sea were automatically excluded. ‘The principal loss here—C. J. Dennis’s Sentimental Bloke being out of the question in any case as essentially

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: f845506d18f3213c
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 19,989,176 bytes (19.063 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 465
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 618.79 minutes
• Total Words: 123,758
• Total Characters: 688,403
• Average Words per Page: 266.15
• Average Characters per Page: 1480.44

Most Frequent Words

old (407), like (337), one (304), man (284), now (277), never (244), said (237), day (218), came (208), night (207), back (206), men (193), well (175), went (172), till (169), see (167), away (166), time (163), horse (161), round (161), dead (144), track (144), come (143), upon (140), twas (140), last (139), long (138), got (137), made (136), head (135), still (135), jack (128), bill (128), good (127), though (126), it’s (126), little (124), there’s (121), says (118), way (115), days (108), say (107), rode (106), found (105), bush (102), thought (102), left (101), wild (101), many (100), know (100), heard (100), yet (97), two (97), run (97), white (95), horses (95), along (95), around (94), river (94), take (94), far (93), right (92), lay (92), knew (91), life (90), creek (90), red (89), eyes (89), hand (88), let (87), ride (87), sun (86), get (85), three (84), side (84), every (84), black (84), hear (83), ever (82), saw (82), across (81), tell (81), ground (81), camp (80), plain (80), gone (79), think (79), i’ve (79), light (78), took (77), seemed (76), cattle (76), grey (76), mate (76), first (75), stood (75), big (74), he’s (74), poor (74), i’ll (74).

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