Australian Bawdy Ballads
LIST OF PAPERS TO DATE
1. TUNE SOURCES FOR AUSTRALIAN FOLKSONGS. Ron Edwards
2. AUSTRALIAN BAWDY BALLADS. Ron Edwards
3. COLLECTORS OF AUSTRALIAN FOLKLORE. Ron Edwards
4. INDEX TO BILL BOWYANG RECITERS. Ron Edwards
5. SHOCKING, SHOCKING, SHOCKING. Wendy Lowenstein
6. THE WALTZING MATILDA DEBATE. Harry Pearce
7. A SELECTION FROM BOWYANG RECITERS. Edited by Ron Edwards
(reissued as THE LASS WHO RODE THE ROVER)
8. JOE WATSON, AUSTRALIAN TRADITIONAL SINGER. Warren Fahey
9. THE HIGHWAYMAN TRADITION IN AUSTRALIA. Graham Seal
10. BRISBANE LADIES. Ron Edwards
11. THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH. Brad Tate
12. STOCKMENS' PLAITED BELTS. Ron Edwards
13. WHIPMAKING, BOOK I. Ron Edwards
14. WHIPMAKING, BOOK II. Ron Edwards
15. BUSHMENS' BELT POUCHES. Ron Edwards
16. THE CONVICT MAID. Ron Edwards
17. THE TRANSPORT'S LAMENT. Ron Edwards
AUSTRALIAN FOLKLORE - OCCASIONAL PAPER No. 2
1986
The idea of issuing these occasional papers was proposed at the
Moreton Bay Folk Festival, held at the University, Brisbane, June 1973. It
was hoped that various Australian folklorists would issue the results of
their fieldwork from time to time in the form of a paper. These papers
would not necessarily all be published by this press.
Since that time 17 papers have been published, the work of six
contributors. 'Australian Bawdy Ballads' was the second in the series and
originally came out in an edition of only one hundred copies and was soon
out of print.
At the present time in Australia a very curious situation has
developed where the official interest in our folklore is suddenly increasing
but the general interest is waning to a marked degree.
As an indication of this some months ago a circular was sent to every
major library in Australia offering to reprint back numbers of these papers
so that libraries could gather together a full collection. Recently another
reminder was sent to these same libraries. The total response has been two
orders!
Copyright Ron Edwards 1973
First edition 1973
Second edition 1986
ISBN 0 909901 10 4
THE RAMS SKULL PRESS
Box 274
KURANDA
Q. 4872
Ph 070 937474
INDEX OF TITLES
BARMAID WITH GONORRHOEA, THE 29
BASTARD FROM THE BUSH, THE 25
BASTARD STEPHEN, THE 31
BETTING THE ROLL ON ROMA 42
BILL THE BULLOCKY 16
BUFFALO SHOOTER'S SONG, THE 53
BUSHY BILL 17
CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH, THE 23
COBB AND CO STATION 40
COMBO'S ANTHEM, THE 49
COOK'S REVENGE, THE 13
CRAVEN A 45
DINKY DI 43
DINKY DI (WORLD WAR II VERSION) 44
DIRTY JIMMY 37
DOG'S PARTY, THE (also known as DOG'S MEETING) 33
DYING HARLOT, THE 41
FANNY BAY 37
GIRL ON BONDI BEACH, THE 38
GIRLS THAT ARE EASY TO WOO, THE 18
KING'S CROSS HARLOT'S BALL, THE 48
LAKESIDE LAMENT 39
MOONLIGHT RIDE, THE 35
MOVING ON 20
MUNICIPAL DUNNY MAN, THE 56
NEW PEOPLE'S FLAG, THE 28
NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI 15
PIDDLING PETE 52
PUB WITH NO DIKE, THE 30
PULL ME DUNGAREES DOWN 46
ROAD TO GUNDAGAI, THE 48
SHEARER'S LAMENT, THE 50
SOUTH OF BOWEN 16
SUNDAY SCHOOL SONG 54
TAROOM GIN, THE 26
THRESHING MACHINE, THE 32
WHITE AUSTRALIA 19
WIRY OLD BUSHMAN, THE 34
YOU'RE THE MAN 22
5
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
A digger proceeded on fourteen days leave, 44
A dirty old harlot lay dying, 41
A farmer's dog came into town, 52
A mountain maid sat in a glen, 31
And oftimes at night, when the stars shining bright, 18
As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush, 23
As the night was falling slowly over city, town and bush, 25
A wiry old bushman with burrs in his socks, 34
Come lads round the campfire, draw near and sit down, 35
Get off dirty Jimmy, and don't tear me clothes, 37
Here comes a ringer down the road, 20
He went up to London and straight way strode, 43
If you ever go up north among the buffalo, 53
I'll sing you a song of what's come to pass, 39
I'll tell you a story, it happened to me, 30
I'm used to driving bullock teams across the hills and plains, 15
It's a a bastard away from a woman and all, 29
I was shearing outback on a wayside track, 50
My mother was a white girl, 19
Now back in the country when I was a boy, 32
Now Bushy Bill with whiskers long, 17
Now gather round you fellows and if you'll be still, 45
Oh, a strapping young harlot lay dying, 41
"Oh show me the way to go home", 38
Once I took a job of cooking, 13
One evening as from my camp, I carelessly did roam, 26
Pull me dungarees down, sport, 46
She must be fast for she can't be slow, 43
South of Bowen down Mywera way, 16
The dirty old harlot lay dying, 41
The dogs all had a party, 33
The municipal dunny pan was full up to the brim, 56
The old man sat in the grandstand chair, 42
The people's flag's not what you think, 28
There's a crack winding back, 48
The working class can kiss my arse, 28
To hell and damnation on Cobb & Co station, 40
Well I fucked in Cuba and I fucked in Spain, 48
When the stock panel slants to the last narli beast, 49
While travelling over the mountain, 16
With a couple of little drinks to make us happy, 37
Young folks, old folks, everybody come, 54
You're the man who fucked my daughter, 22
6
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
Australia and New Zealand are probably the most unfortunate
countries in the world as far as the recording of their own folklore is
concerned. Other lands and races have either produced their own
folklorists or they have been studied by trained field workers from the
larger nations. We have always missed out.
There has never been a full time folklorist in Australia, no
university has thought fit to make any efforts in this direction, and the
only official recognition that has ever been made to the subject has come
from the Commonwealth Literary Fund which has made a number of small
cash grants over the years to assist two or three workers engaged in
preparing collections of Australian folk songs.
All folklore studies in this country have been done by amateurs
working in their own time, a day here, half a day there. What we have
lost as a result of this lack of official interest is impossible to calculate,
but it may well be that all the material that has been collected in this
country over the past seventy years represents only ten percent of what
could have been collected if full time workers had been in the field.
Unfortunately for the most part the chance has gone forever. If a
hundred trained field workers were to begin tomorrow it is unlikely that
they would turn up more than a handful of bush songs that have not
already been collected - and the bush song has always been at the centre
of Australian folklore collecting. The bush singers have almost all passed
on.
Australia had only a hundred years to create its own tradition of
bush songs. The last century began with a few convict ballads, moved
into the era of gold rushes and bushrangers, and reached its flowering with
the songs of shearing, droving and life in the bush. By the turn of this
century the Sydney Bulletin, known as the 'Bushman's Bible' because of its
keen appreciation of outback life, concluded that the bush ballad was
already fading away, and took steps to preserve what still existed.
Through its columns Australian poet 'Banjo' Paterson asked bushmen
to send in the texts of all the bush songs that they could remember, and
in time this was collected into a book called simply 'Old Bush Songs.' The
first edition (1905) contained around fifty songs and these were added to
over a period so that by 1926 the fifth edition contained 72 song.
For nearly fifty years, from the turn of the century to 1950, this
small collection represented the entire opus of folklore recorded in
Australia. It was universally accepted that the sum total of this country's
folklore was contained in this handful of songs, which was not even
complete in itself as no . tunes were included.
With the 1950s came what has been called the folksong revival,
7
though it would be more correct to call it the beginning. Less than
twenty collectors were involved, all amateurs and all working in their
spare time. Even today, over twenty years later there are no more, in
fact there may be even fewer. Australia is undoubtedly unique in being
the only country of its size where every folklorist knows every other
person in the field at least by name if not personally.
Because of the few people involved, and the small amount of time
available, almost all field work was devoted exclusively to the collection
of songs, and some 27 odd books and booklets were published on the
subject. Other aspects of our folklore, yarns, dances and so on have been
largely ignored except by a few dedicated enthusiasts.
Recently this has begun to change and collectors have started to
look further afield. One reason for this has been the drying up of song
sources, the tradition seems to have faded fairly quicky after 1900 and
bush singers became more and more rare. Those who survive are
generally in their late seventies or mid-eighties, at an age when memory
has started to falter.
It is not clear just why the singing tradition died out, it is almost as
though there has been a change in the national character. Even in
isolated bush camps, the very places where our songs were originally
created, the singer is a rarity today. In fact except amongst the old,
where a trace of tradition still lingers, the average male Australian is
acutely embarrassed if asked to sing.
Where outside entertainment is not available the yarn has taken the
place of the song round the stockmens' campfire. Not, I hasten to add,
the tall story, which is frequenty equated with the yarn, but the genuine
bush yarn which takes all manner of forms and may be serious, or even
brutal, just as often as it is funny. It can also be very rude, a frustrated
outcry against a life style that interferes with normal sexual patterns.
This changing pattern of bush entertainment was well expressed by
one of my informants. He had been a shearer since 1930 and during that
time had worked right through north-west Queensland. In all that time he
had seldom heard a bush song performed in any of the many sheds in
which he had worked. I asked him how he and his shearing mates filled in
the long evenings in that isolated country.
"Well, we used to read, or play cards, or yarn. One time, this was
in 1939, we hired a radio for a few days because we heard that war was
likely to be declared. Then sometimes some of the blokes would recite
dirty poems to fill in the time."
Why did the ordinary bush song fade away while the bawdy ballad
survived? Perhaps the introduction of the radio with its persistant
reiteration of the hit parade was a factor, but it could only have played a
small part because the songs were on their way out long before the radio
came on the scene.
Apart from the work situation the great gathering place for the
Australian male is the pub, and it is a curious fact that most publicans,
for reasons of their own, frown on singing in the bar. It is not the noise
factor that worries them, they will play racing results at ear-splitting
volume, and totally ignore arguments carried on in shouts, in fact the
more noise there is the happier they appear to be - as long as no one is
singing.
The publican is perhaps a little more tolerant in country areas. This
is not because he is a nicer sort of man, but simple because he has less
customers and therefore must extract more money per head from each of
them. This means that the country drinker is encouraged to spend longer
in the bar rather than drink up fast and get out.
8
He may play darts, hookey, or other games of skill, he can yarn with
his mates or read the paper or perhaps, if the publican allows it, he may
sing. However, even among country publicans there are still a number
who will not permit singing.
But even this does not explain the fading away of the bush song,
because no one was prevented from singing in the cattle camps and
shearers' huts where time can hang heavy. And yet, as my shearing friend
explained the song was not heard, only the 'dirty poem.
The bawdy ballad is a curious art form, a combination of poetry and
lust. It flourishes, and is generally created in, sexually deprived societies,
which is why the tradition is so strong among ex-servicemen, bushmen -
and perhaps children.
Bawdy verse in Australia falls into a number of categories. First
there are the children's rhymes, which I shall not dwell on as these are
discussed fully in a separate paper.
The adult material may be divided into three general sections. First
there are the items which may be called International. These may be
heard all over the English speaking world, and some have become classics
of their kind. They are the type most often heard in the ex-servicemens'
clubs in this country, and this probably holds true for service clubs
overseas.
The next group may be called Australianised parodies. Generally
speaking they are bawdy parodies of popular songs of the day. Names and
locations mentioned in the text are changed to an Australian setting. Take
the case of the parody of "South of the Border" included in this collection,
a poor parody but a good example. This parody could have been strung
together in any part of the world, its only claim to being Australian being
the use of local place names.
The third, and to me most interesting, group are the true bawdy bush
ballads. These are totally different in style to the other groups, being in
the direct tradition of the Australian bush ballad. It is only their subject
matter that has kept them out of previously published collections of
Australian folk song.
Although interesting they are also the most unpleasant group of
ballads being concerned for the most part with sadistic variations on the
love/hate relationship between the bushman and the Aboriginal woman.
Since the founding of the colony the white settler in the bush has
always regarded the Aboriginal people as something less than human.
They were callously shot and poisoned by our pioneer forefathers who took
their lands by sheer force.
Even today the Aboriginal still remains the Untouchable in the
pastoral areas. In the cattle camp he will eat and sleep separately and
any contact, especially physical, is frowned upon. I have often noted the
charade which commonly takes place at smokos and lunch breaks among
stockmen. The camp boss, or the cook, will never hand the billy of tea or
stew (made especially for the Aboriginal stockmen) directly to their
representative, but will always put it on the ground, then the other will
pick it up and take it away. This is done to avoid any chance that their
hands might accidentally touch when the transfer takes place.
Given these . extreme anti-aboriginal prejudices one can then
understand the trauma faced by a bushman in an area where there are no
available white women. To satisfy his sexual urges he must turn to the
Aboriginal woman, but with an acute feeling of demeaning himself by this
action.
From this attitude has sprung the savage, brutal, anti-aboriginal
ballads that are so popular with the Australian bushman. By their
9
recitation he imagines that he is getting his revenge on a race that he
feels has forced him, by his own sexual actions, into a humiliating
position. Brad Tate has commented that among all his collected material
there is only one ballad THE GREAT SHAGGING MATCH that has an
Aboriginal as its hero. (See The Bastard from the Bush Occasional Paper
no.11.)
Of course not all the bush ballads are concerned with Aboriginals,
they cover quite a variety of subjects, but the one thing they all have in
common is a startling violence. The laughter is savage and the actions
sadistic.
The ballads come from men whose way of life, even today, is
frequently hard and violent. An average days work, putting cattle through
the yards, is raw and elemental, a savage confrontation between man and
beast, with the ever present chance that the beast may win today. With
eyes and lungs full of dust a man on foot confronts a yard full of half
wild cattle with only a whip to proclaim him the master, and the air
stinks with the smell of burning flesh as four men fall upon a half grown
calf caught in a crush and thrown on its side. As the beast bawls in pain
and terror one man is castrating it, another giving an injection, a piece is
being clipped from its ear, and its horns are being crunched off with a
sickening cracking noise.
The same violence comes back to the men, with gorings and violent
falls from horseback an ever present part of their lives. A big part of the
work of the Flying Doctor service is treating injured stockmen or bringing
them back to the city for hospital treatment. The ballads created by
these men reflect the life that they lead.
As mentioned earlier there has never ever been a thorough search
for folksong in Australia and, without the incentive of possible publication,
there has been even less study of the bawdy ballad. Australia has always
had a strong censorship lobby, and the various state governments have
always been more than willing to clamp down on anything that they felt
might corrupt their voters.
It is not surprising then to discover that there seems to have been
only one major collection of bawdy ballads published in Australia, and that
was anonymous, Snatches and Lays carried the date 1962, but no other
information as to editor or publisher, or even where it originated. (A
second edition of this book came out in 1973, published by Sun Books,
Melbourne.)
The first edition consists of 82 pages and contains 69 songs (but no
music), and 13 recitations, plus a number of limericks, toasts etc. The
collection contains some interesting Australian items that I have included
in this collection, as well as some of the best of the international items
that are current in Australia. Unfortunately it contains no notes.
For many years ballads have been circulated in the form of roneoed
broadsides, THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH is an example of this and
there have doubtless been other small underground collections issued by
student groups and other organisations and clubs. Snatches and Lays
acknowledges one item as having come from The First Boke of Fowle
Ayres Sydney, 1944, a collection that I have not sighted.
The only other item in the field is a recent publication, Robust,
Ribald and Rude Verse in Australia by Bill Wannan, Lansdowne Press,
1972. A lessening of censorship has made this publication possible for
general publication, but even so its contents are far less ribald than what
they are purported to be.
It contains 68 items, plus some limericks, but of this total only 18
could be considered bawdy by any standards, and of this 18 only 10 are
10
Australian, Even the version of the 'Bastard from the Bush' that is
included transpires to be the 'clean' version with a few naughty words
added into give it some spice.
Undoubtedly the bawdy ballad will continue to flourish in Australia
wherever conditions are appropriate. It is interesting that most of the
informants for this material fall within the 30-50 age group while the
singers of general bush songs are invariably elderly-
It is also worth noting that new material is being composed, songs
which comment on contemporary happenings such as the opening of Lake
Burley Griffen as well as parodies on recent songs from the hit prade.
Irrespective of the rules and wishes of our local censors it seems
that the bawdy ballad will be with us for along time to come.
3uly 1973
INTRODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION
Nothing has really changed in the thirteen years since the above was
written. Only one important work has been published on the subject and
that is Brad Tate's Bastard from the Bush. Changes in social attitudes
have occured over the intervening years to the extent that people seem to
wish to believe that this aspect of our folklore does not exist.
The result of this is that Tate's work has been ignored by many of the
people who claim to be seriously interested in Australian folklore. This
change in attitude has been so marked that the very small 200 copy first
edition of Tate's book has not sold out at the time of writing though it
was published four years ago, in 1982.
This present edition of Australian Bawdy Ballads is not a limited one,
even though only a few copies are being printed. It contains the same
contents as the first edition.
Ron Edwards
Box 274
Kuranda
11
12
THE COOK'S REVENGE
Once I took a job of cooking,
For some poddy-dodging cows,
But of all the little jobs I had,
It took the cake for rows.
The bloody meat was gone bad,
And the cake it was a sod,
For the damper had gone ropey,
It was, so help me Bob.
The tea it looked like water,
And the pudding just as bad,
And every time we fork it on,
It made us fellows mad.
One day I thought I'll square things,
And let them see no mug was I,
So I mixed some sniftin' pea soup,
To make them fellows cry.
Half a tin of curry,
To give the stuff a grip,
And half a tin of pepper,
To make them fellows shit.
And half a tin of cow dung,
Singed to make it look like toast,
The stink of it would knock you down,
Like Jesus Holy Ghost.
So the stockmen came in early,
If no tucker - look out for us,
"Just hop in here you stockman boys,
For I'll bring some soup to light."
So the plate full each they took,
By cripes it tastes all right,
But nothing like the second helping,
To make them bastards shite.
They shit upon the table,
They shit upon the floor,
The rotten dirty bastards -
They never asked for more.
So I snatched my time before the manager came,
I wandered down the line,
So if you're looking for a first class cook,
I'm waiting for the job.
Collected from Arthur Croydon, Cairns, 23rd January, 1970, who gave
his age as 65. An Aboriginal, he had worked as a stockman all over the
13
area known as the Gulf country (this area, devoted to cattle raising,
adjoins the area known as Cape York, and takes in those areas of the
north-west whose rivers find their way to the Gulf of Carpentaria).
He had lived for some time in the then remote settlement of
Cooktown, where he was a member of an amateur trio that regularly
performed at one of the local hotels in return for drinks. He claimed that
this was one of his own compositions, made up some thirty years earlier.
I might add that this is a frequent claim made by informants, even if they
have done no more than slightly modify a traditional ballad, and every
such claim has to be judged on its own merits,
Croydon said that this song became very popular around cattle camps
and in outback pubs. He described how one night in a hotel in Dajarra,
Queensland, a stockman poked ten pounds under his mandolin strings and
asked him to sing it again.
The Australian Aboriginal is very suspicious of the law, and sees it as
a series of snares designed to catch him, especially if he seems to be
getting any sort of financial advantage, and so Croydon refused the
money, explaining that he had no 'licence' to sing.
However the stockman threatened to punch him, and so he was
forced to sing the song 'to save myself from a hiding'. He related with
satisfaction that he earned fifteen pounds that night from his singing
"When all those ringers come into town they've got more money than they
know what to do with."
NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI
The great joke with this old bush song is that it is known to every
school child and Sunday School teacher in the country, but always with the
transpositon of the one key word in the text. The song in its original
form (and the present version is a good example having been collected
from a traditional singer) is a hymn of frustration.
The unfortunate bullock driver suffers through a seemingly endless
series of frustrations, a woeful combination of mud, rain, darkness,
damage to both his waggon and his beasts, and finally hunger. The
ultimate tragedy is the discovery that his dog has defecated in the tucker
(food) box.
Many years ago some unknown bush performer decided to make the
ballad respectable by the simple expedient of substituting the word 'sat'
for 'shit' and in this form the ballad came immensely popular, even though
the entire point of the tale has been lost! Worthy citizens were so
attracted to this curious notion of a dog sitting on a tucker box that they
finally erected a monument to the creature some few miles from the town
of Gundagai in New South Wales.
As a child I had no knowledge of the original ballad and, like ninety
percent of the population, I accepted the fact that the dog had always sat
on the tuckerbox, and yet a folk memory persisted around us without our
being conscious of it.
14
The sweet shop across the road from our school (this was in Geelong,
Victoria, in the mid thirties), used to sell small metal toys known as
Gundagai Dogs. These were in the form of a dog, 5cm high, hunched in
the defecating position. Small pellets were supplied with the dog and one
of these was pushed into its anus and a match applied.
There was a hiss and a splutter and then, to the amazement of us
children, a long ash coloured spaghetti like core would begin to issue
forth, winding across the ground until it was three or four times the
length of the dog. It was the only childhood toy that I regret not having
kept,
NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI is also known as BILL THE
BULLOCKY, THE DOG SAT ON THE TUCKERBOX and FIVE MILES
FROM GUNDAGAI, Most Australian collectors have encountered at least
one version of it. It seems to have developed into two distinct forms,
that of song and recitation.
It is interesting to note that while the versions of this ballad that
commence 'I'm used to driving bullock teams' show little variation within
the texts, those that introduce the narrator, Bill the Bullocky, by name,
differ considerably from each other. It may well be that BILL THE
BULLOCKY is the older version, originally created as a song, while NINE
MILES FROM GUNDAGAI is a later re-working intended purely as a
recitation.
NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI
I'm used to driving bullock teams across the hills and plains,
I've teamed outback for forty years in blazing drought and rains,
I've lived a heap of trouble down without a blooming lie,
But I can't forget what happened to me nine miles from Gundagai.
'Twas getting dark, the team got bogged, the axle snapped in two,
I lost me matches and me pipe so what was I to do?
The rain came down, 'twas bitter cold, and hungry too was I,
And the dog shit in the tucker box, nine miles from Gundagai.
Some blokes I know has stacks of luck no matter how they fall,
But there was I, Lord love a duck, no blasted luck at all,
I couldn't make a pot of tea, or get me trousers dry,
And the dog shit in the tucker box, nine miles from Gundagai.
I can forgive the blinking team, I can forgive the rain,
I can forgive the dark and cold - I'd go through it again,
I can forgive me rotten luck, but hang me till I die,
I can't forgive that flaming dog, nine miles from Gundagai.
The text given above was collected from the late Billy Lees of
Cairns, 14th April, 1966. He had been born in 1878, said that he had
learned it "some years ago" and could not recall any tune to it. This
15
version lacks one episode that is generally encountered, that of one of the
bullocks wounding another.
This is mentioned in another version of this ballad, in this case one of
the song versions (though unfortunately my informant could not recall the
tune) and I am including it under the title 'Bill the Bullocky'.
BILL THE BULLOCKY
While travelling over the mountain,
I heard a maiden cry,
There goes old Bill the Bullocky,
He's bound for Gundagai.
Through eating beef and damper,
His shit was stiff as clay,
No better man through sand or dirt,
Than Bill the Bullocky.
With Spark and Charley in the lead,
And on the pole old Ball,
Who bent his back, nor cared a damn,
If the others pulled at all.
It was then that Nobby broke the yoke,
Blucher poked out Baldy's eye,
And the dog shit in the tuckerbox,
Nine miles from Gundagai.
This was collected from Percy Skinner, Cairns 6th April, 1965. He
had been born in Casino, NSW in 1889, and had learned this song in 1905
while working as a bullock driver in the Clarence River area of New South
Wales, where he was engaged in hauling out timber.
SOUTH OF BOWEN
South of Bowen down Mywera way,
That's where I met a chrome and took her home the other day-
She knew I was stony and I couldn't pay,
As I am a soldier on five bob a day.
And she sighed as she sucked my banana,
Never dreaming that I was coming,
And I cried as I shot my banana,
For my Banana's rotten luck-
Collected December 15th 1972. My informant had learned it in the
tin mining town of Herberton, Queensland in 1944, while in hospital. It is
of course a parody on SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a song popular at the
time, and doubtless this same parody will have appeared in many areas
with only the locality changed. Bowen is a town on the Queensland coast.
16
BUSHY BILL
Now Bushy Bill with whiskers long,
Hit Sydney town and strolled along
His eyes were burning fiery bright,
His carcass full of fuck and fight.
For Bill had been to Sydney once before,
He left there wise, but fucking poor.
("Now there's a bit I don't know, apparently he'd been at Kelly's Den of
Sin and they'd thrown him out, and it went - ")
With sagging limbs and aching chest,
Bill swore his vengeance and headed west.
("Then he's out near Cobar and he finds a dead jack mule on the track.")
Bill threw himself into a crouch,
And jerked Jack's penis from its pouch,
He cut himself off a good two feet,
And said "If this grafts on life will be sweet."
He coaxed its growth with cunning hands,
And stuffed his balls with monkey glands.
("There's another gap there, then he's back in Sydney outside Kelly's Den
of Sin, and he's saying - ")
"I'll bet five hundred pounds without a break,
I'll fuck you harlots, and
When I put you chromos through,
I'll fuck you dirty bludgers too."
The harlots gazed with lustful eyes,
And rushed to gain this luscious prize,
"Hold!" crid Bill "You dirty whores,
Disrobe yourselves, pull down your drawers."
The harlots lay upon their backs,
Split wide their legs, produced their cracks,
With a mighty yell he drove it in,
Its monstrous head knocked back her chin.
"Take that!" crid Bill "You dirty slut."
As he withdrew it from her busted gut.
Bill kept a slow and steady grind,
And left a row of gaping wombs behind.
He finished the last by the break of day,
And forty harlots passed away.
Then up jumped Bill with a yell,
And bludgers fled like bats from Hell.
And as the last one scuttled past,
Bill presented him with a busted arse.
17
("Then there's another gap and it ends up - ")
And lovingly he pats his tool,
And practices on Mrs. Mule.
Collected from B.A. Holloways Beach, Queensland, 3rd January, 1973.
According to my informant this ballad was still popular around the
Collinsville area of Queensland, a coal mining and cattle breeding area.
Unfortunately he could not remember the complete text, and I have added
his explanations as the story unfolded.
THE GIRLS THAT ARE EASY TO WOO
And oftimes at night
When the stars shining bright
We'll hear that old didgeridoo,
And my footsteps will stray,
For I can't keep away,
From the girls that are easy to woo.
CHORUS:
Home, home on the range,
Where the gins and the young kweeais play,
Where a man is supplied
With a girl for a bride,
And the old river rolls on her way.
This simple parody on HOME ON THE RANGE was collected from the
late Bill Harney, Ferntree Gully, 1957. FANNY BAY and THE COMBO'S
ANTHEM were also collected from him at the same time.
A kweeai is a young Aboriginal woman, and the river referred to is
the Daly, which is also the subject of a longer song.
The following additional information was supplied to me by military
historian, D.H.Johnson.
"A different chorus was sung at my boarding school in the fifties. It is
apparent that local poetasters adjusted the chorus and in some cases the
material of these songs to their own districts."
Home, home on the range
Where the wombats and wallabies play
Where a man is supplied with a gin for a bride,
And the Condamine flows on its way.
18
WHITE AUSTRALIA
My mother was a white girl,
My father he's a chow,
My uncle keeps hash-house,
He bought out Mick the Cow.
My aunt she is a black gin,
They call her uncle's wife,
And I'm the greatest bastard,
You'll ever meet in life.
Talk of your White Australia,
Why I'm game to make a bet,
That since the Japs beat Russia,
They'll have Australia yet.
Australia's immigration policy in the past was always referred to in
the media as the White Australia Policy, though it was never known
officially by this name. In fact successive generations of politicians were
always at pains to point out that such a policy did not exist, while at the
same time ensuring the perpetuation of immigration laws designed to
exclude coloured people and those whose political views were at variance
with their own.
One such law for instance allowed the immigration authorities to
administer a written examination in any European language to the
prospective visitor with no limit on the number of languages that could be
used. It was correctly reasoned that the number of coloured people who
could speak both Rumanian and Finnish would be rather small.
This was collected in September 1972 from Harry Dawkins of Cairns,
who had learned it at Meekering, Western Australia, around 1907. Variants
of the first two verses are not uncommon in which each member of the
family is put down in turn. Brad Tate has noted a fragment used as a
children's rhyme.
According to D.H.Johnson, "On the White Australia policy, there was a
verse sung to Rule Britannia I think about the time Sir Henry Parkes was
contemplating restrictive immigration legislation in New South Wales
(circa 1890?)"
Rule Britannia, God bless the Prince of Wales
No more Chinamen allowed in New South Wales-
Me mother's in a brothel,
Me father, he's in jail,
And I'm the only son of a cunt
That's left to tell the tale.
19
MOVING ON
Here comes a ringer down the road,
Playing shotgun boogy with his roll,
He's moving on - moving on,
He got the sack for rooting the blacks,
Now he's moving on.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
If the grog don't get you then the coppers must,
We're moving on, we're rolling on,
Shovel that coal hear that engine roll,
We're moving on.
Collected Holloway Beach, 15th December 1972 from Ted B. It is a
parody of the song MOVING ON and, as so frequently happens, it has been
so roughly worked over that some lines are quite meaningless. Its sole
purpose seems to be to commemorate the not infrequent occurrence of a
ringer (Australian equivalent of a cowboy) losing his job through having
had sexual relations with Aboriginal women.
The following notes on the song came from D.H.Johnson.
"'Moving On' is a widely parodied air. The Army version is concerned
with the Korean war, and is still sung by soldiers of that vintage."
See that momma-san come down the track
With a little Aussie bastard on her back
We're movin' on, we're almost gone,
We're getting too close to a shaggin-up post
We're moving on.
If there's one thing that I can't stand
It's a South Korean or a Chinaman
We're movin' on, we're almost gone,
We're getting too close to a shaggin-up post
We're moving on.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If the gunners don't get you then the air force must.
We're movin' on, we're almost gone,
We're getting too close to a shaggin-up post
We're moving on.
Here come the Kiwis over the top
Picking up the medals that the Aussies drop
We're movin' on, we're almost gone,
We're getting too close to a shaggin-up post
We're moving on.
What's that patter of tiny feet
It's One Cav Div in full retreat (i)
We're movin' on, we're almost gone,
We're getting too close to a shaggin-up post
We're moving on.
(i) 1st (American) Cavalry Division.
" As an addendum to the above I heard the following stanza in the mid
fifties:"
I had a little dog that was doing fine
Till I rubbed his arse with turpentine
Now doggies gone, he's movin' on. etc..
"On the same topic, the Korean war, another fragment frequently sung
by veterans of that war. It is from a much longer version."
I was down in Kobe, having lots of fun (i)
When they said the war had started and they handed me a gun,
And I'm fighting for those bastards in Australia.
Why are you running, Kiwi, are you afraid to die?
The reason that I'm running is that Kiwis cannot fly.
And I'm fighting for those bastards in Australia.
(i) i.e. A member of the Australian contingent of the British
Commonwealth Occupation Forces in Japan, from where the Australian
contingent to the U.N. force in Korea was drawn.
"And , although I suspect that it is probably derived from an
overseas source, to the Regimental March of the 3rd Battalion, Royal
Australian Regiment, Our Director.
We're a pack of bastards, bastards are we,
We're from Australia, the arsehole of the world and of the Universe.
We're a pack of bastards, bastards are we,
We'd rather fuck than fight for liberty.
YOU'RE THE MAN
You're the man who fucked my daughter,
Pulled her tits and made them water,
Now you'll have to pay my daughter,
Five half-crowns a week.
A children's rhyme collected 30th October, 1972. My informant
added the following comments. "This was sung by us schoolboys in
Gympie (Queensland) about fifty-five years ago. As we knew that old
people are easily shocked and corrupted we did not ever sing it in their
presence.
"Australian workers at that time, or at least the ones I knew among
goldminers and bush workers in Gympie, were puritanical in talk. Many of
them, my parents for example, were born in Victorian times, but also a
small town keeps an eye on everyone, and in the days before social
services and contraception sex was rather a grim affair."
The tune is "Men of Harlech".
THE CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH and THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH
THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH and THE SHEARER'S LAMENT
would seem to be the best known bawdy ballads in Australia- Most male
Australians know at least one line from the former "Well, fuck me dead
it's Foreskin Ned, the Bastard from the Bush!" Variations on the
questions asked of the Bastard and the invariably rude answers are also
quite common and can be said to actually exist as couplets in their own
right, being quite frequently quoted without any reference to the ballad.
The original of this ballad was written by Henry Lawson under the
title THE CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH, and appeared as given here in the
Sydney Bulletin 26th March, 1892. This was at a time when the street
gangs, known as pushes, were active in Sydney, especially around the area
called the Rocks. They were frequently depicted in their distinctive garb
in cartoons in the Bulletin, short jackets, bell bottom trousers and
high-heeled square toed boots designed to inflict the maxim injury on their
victims.
Over the years THE CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH became modified into
the version known today as THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH, though an
interesting example of the survival of the original may be found in Bill
Wannan's Robust Ribald and Rude Verse. Although this was published as
recently as 1972 the ballad given as THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH is
actually the original with only a few minor variations mainly in the nature
of using words such as bastard that Lawson was not able to use in print
eighty years before, having to write about the (something) from the bush.
The BASTARD as collected today (apart from the exception
mentioned above) remains remarkably consistent. One of Brad Tate's
informants, a printer, says that the printing of this ballad has been a
regular "underground" order for many years in the trade, and circulation
of the broadside has doubless done much to fix the form. Certainly the
version that I collected in Cairns, April 1973, differs only in the most
minor way from the one collected by Brad Tate in Sydney.
THE CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH
As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush,
From a slum in Jone's Alley sloped the Captain of the Push;
And he scowled towards the North, and he scowled towards the South,
As he hooked his little fingers in the corners of his mouth.
Then his whistle, loud and shrill, woke the echoes of the "Rocks",
And a dozen ghouls came sloping round the corners of the blocks-
There was nought to rouse their anger, yet the oath that each one swore
Seemed less fit for publication than the one that went before.
For they spoke the gutter language with the easy flow that comes
Only to the men whose childhood knew the brothels and the slums.
Then they spat in turns, and halted, and the one that came behind,
Spitting fiercely on the pavement, called on Heaven to strike him blind.
Let us first describe the captain, bottle-shouldered, pale and thin,
For he was the beau-ideal of a Sydney larrikin;
E'en his hat was most suggestive of the city where we live,
With a gallows-tilt that no one, save a larrikin, can give.
And the coat, a little shorter than the writer would desire,
Showed a more or less uncertain portion of his strange attire.
That which tailors know as 'trousers'- known by him as 'blooming bags'
Hanging loosely from his person, swept with tattered ends, the flags,
And he had a pointed sternpost to the boots that peeped below
(Which he laced up from the centre of the nail of his great toe),
And he wore his shirt uncollared, and the tie correctly wrong;
But I think his vest was shorter than should be in one so long.
And the captain crooked his finger at a stranger on the kerb,
Whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb,
And he begged the Gory Bleeders that they wouldn't interrupt
Till he gave an introduction - it was painfully abrupt -
"Here's the bleeding' push, me covey - here's a (something) from the bush!
Strike me dead, he wants to join us!" said the captain of the push.
Said the stranger "I am nothing but a bushy and a dunce;
But I read about the bleeders in the Weekly Gasbag once,
Sitting lonely in the humpy when the wind began to "whoosh',
How I longed to share the dangers and the pleasures of the push!
Gosh! I hate the swells and good 'uns- I could burn 'em in their beds,
I am with you if you'll have me, and I'll break their blazing heads."
"Now look here," exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush,
"Now look here- suppose a feller was to split upon the push,
Would you lay for him and fetch him, even if the traps were round?
Would you lay him out and kick him to a jelly on the ground?
Would you jump upon the nameless- kill, or cripple him, or both?
Speak, or else I'll - SPEAK!" The stranger answered, "My kerlonial oath!"
Z3
"Now, look here," exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush,
"Now, look here - suppose the Bleeders let you come and join the push,
Would you smash a bleedin' bobby if you got the blank alone?
Would you break a swell or Chinkie - split his garret with a stone?
Would you have a 'moll' to keep you - like to swear off work for good?"
"Yes, my oath!" replied the stranger "My kerlonial oath! I would!"
"Now look here," exclaimed the captain to that stranger from the bush,
"Now look here - before the Bleeders let yer come and join the push,
You must prove that you're a blazer - you must prove that you have grit
Worthy of a Gory Bleeder - you must show your form a bit -
Take a rock and smash that winder!" And the stranger, nothing loth,
Took the rock and -smash! They only muttered, "My kerlonial oath!"
So they swore him in, and found him sure of aim and light of heel,
And his only fault, if any, lay in his excessive zeal;
He was good at throwing metal, but we chronicle with pain
That he jumped upon a victim, damaging the watch and chain
Ere the Bleeders had secure them; yet the captain of the push
Swore a dozen oaths in favour of the stranger from the bush.
Late next morn the captain, rising, hoarse and thirsty from his lair,
Called the newly-feathered Bleeder, but the stranger wasn't there!
Quickly going through the pockets of his "bloomin' bags", he learned
That the stranger had been through him for the stuff his "moll" had
earned;
And the language that he muttered I should scarcely like to tell.
(Stars! and notes of exclamation!! blank and dash will do as well.)
In the night the captain's signal woke the echoes of the "Rocks",
Brought the Gory Bleeders sloping through the shadow of the blocks;
And they swore the stranger's action was a blood-escaping shame,
While they waited for the nameless, but the nameless never came.
And the Bleeders soon forgot him; but the captain of the push
Still is "laying" round, in ballast, for the nameless "from the bush".
THE BASTARD FROM THE BUSH
As the night was falling slowly over city, town and bush,
From a house in Hogan's Alley came the Captain of the Push,
And his whistle loud and piercing woke the echoes of the Rocks,
And a dozen ghouls came slouching round the corners of the docks.
Then the Captain jerked a finger at a stranger on the kerb,
Whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb.
Then he made the introduction, "Here's a covey from the bush,
Fuck me blind, he wants to join us, be a member of the Push."
Then the stranger made this answer to the Captain of the Push,
"Fuck me dead, I'm Foreskin Fred, the Bastard from the Bush!
I've been to every two-up school from Darwin to the 'Loo,
I've ridden colts and black gins, what more can a Bastard do?"
"Are you game to smash a window?" asked the Captain of the Push;
"I'd knock a fucking house down," said the Bastard from the Bush.
"Would you take a maiden's baby?" said the Captain of the Push,
"I'd take a baby's maiden," said the Bastard from the Bush.
"Would you bash a bloody copper, if you caught the cunt alone?
Would you stoush a swell or chinky, split his garret with a stone?
Would you make your wife a harlot, would swear off work for good?"
Again that bastard's voice rang out. "My fucking oath, I would."
"Do you help the girls pick gumleaves?" asked the Captain of the Push,
"No, I hit 'em with the branches," said the Bastard from the Bush.
"Would you knock me down and rob me?" asked the Captain of the Push,
"I'd knock you down and fuck you!" said the Bastard from the bush.
"Would you like a cigarette?" said the Captain of the Push,
"I'll take the bloody packet," said the Bastard from the Bush.
Then the Pushites all took counsel, saying "Fuck me, but he's game,
Let's make him our star basher, and he'll live up to his name."
So they took him to their hide-out, that Bastard from the bush,
And they gave him all the privileges belonging to the Push.
But soon they found his little ways were more than they could stand,
And finally the Captain thus addressed his little band;
"Now listen here you buggers, we've caught a fucking tartar;
At every kind of bludgin' that bastard's got the starter,
At poker and at two-up he shook our fucking rules,
He swipes our fucking liquor and he robs our fucking girls."
So down in Hogan's Alley, all the members of the Push
Laid a dark and dirty ambush for the Bastard from the Bush,
And against the wall of Riley's pub, the Bastard made a stand,
A nasty grin upon his dial, a bike chain in his hand.
25
They sprang upon him in a bunch, but one by one they fell,
With crack of bone, unearthly groan and agonizing yell,
Till the sorely battered Captain, spitting teeth and coughing blood,
Held an ear all torn and bleeding in a hand bedaubed with mud.
"You low polluted bastard," snarled the Captain of the Push,
"Get back to where you come from, that's somewhere in the bush.
And I hope that vile misfortune may tumble down on you;
May some lousy harlot dose you till your bollocks turn sky blue."
"May the pangs of windy spasms through your aching bowels dart,
May you shit your bloody trousers, every time you try to fart,
May you take a swig of gin's piss, mistaking it for beer,
May the Push you next impose on toss you out upon your ear."
"May the itching piles torment you, may corns grow on your feet,
May crabs as big as spiders attack your balls a treat.
Then when you're down and out and a hopeless bloody wreck,
May you slip back through your arsehole and break your fucking neck."
THE TAROOM GIN
One evening as from my camp
I carelessly did roam,
Along the Dawson rivers bank
Near a place they call Taroom.
The town seemed dull and lonely
Since I'd been there before,
There was only a store and a shanty,
Kept by Zerby, and nothing more.
I spied a dusky maiden,
Come tripping down the track,
That led along the river bank,
She was beautiful but black.
A possum skin was round her waist
She asked me for tobacco,
And if I'd seen a nigger's camp
The day that I passed Cracrow.
I answered all her questions,
But being very raw,
In turn I asked her for a jump,
And nothing more.
A plug of Havelock black twist
I from my pocket drew,
And holding firmly in my hand
Said "This I'll give to you.
"Along with matches, tea and beef,
When I have done you well",
She smiled and merely whispered,
"Gibbitt shilling, nothing more."
Well, I could scarcely spare the coin,
But at length I did agree
And beckoning me to follow her,
She went behind a tree.
She told me there in whispers,
That she's never been touched before,
"Except one white fella put in
Little finger - nothing more."
Well I threw my arms around her,
As she lay there on the grass,
And opening wide her dusky thighs,
Exposed her coal black arse.
Her bosom throbbed with each move,
And she cried when all was o'er,
And threw her arms around my neck,
And cried out "Put in more."
That evening when the sun went down,
We had our promised supper,
You bet me boys before she went,
Again I slapped it up her.
I was told next morning by a chap
Who worked in Zerbie's store,
That she had dosed a ringer
With the clap and something more.
Not many days had passed away,
When I had cause to say,
"Bloody curse upon those charms,
That led me so astray."
Some weeks before I did get well,
And from that day I swore,
In future all that colour
I would shun forever more.
This was collected in the Lansdowne Hotel, Camooweal, Queensland,
July 25th, 1965. The informant was a well known Northern Territory
cattle man. Taroom is in central Queensland, on the Dawson River.
27
THE NEW PEOPLE'S FLAG
The people's flag's not what you think,
It's not bright red but dirty pink;
It is not stained with martyr's blood,
But Kings Cross harlot's menstrual flood.
Then raise that stinking flag on high!
Beneath its folds I'll bludge or die,
I'll pimp for prosses, pimps and pervs,
And knife the poachers on my preserves.
The working class can kiss my arse,
I've got the bludger's job at last,
That lurky mob can kiss my knob,
For now I have the foreman's job.
No more I'll have to pimp and crawl,
I sit around and do fuck-all,
I wouldn't leave if they gave me bail-
I am the warder of Long Bay Gaol.
One couplet of this song (with minor variations) is frequently
collected, and is probably known to most urban workers;
The working class can kiss my arse,
I've got the bosse's job at last.
The rest of the ballad does not appear to be well know, and this
couplet may predate it. The song comes from Snatches and Lays.
D Johnson added the following note.
"The Internationale as sung by University of Queensland students in
the mid-fifties.
The working class can kiss my arse,
I've got a bludger's job at last.
The working class can bend and kiss
My fundamental orifice.
The working class can kiss my arse
I've got a bludger's job at last.
"And, a propos of nothing, the lovely parody in a recent New
Statesman.
The worker's flag is brightest pink,
It's not so red as you might think!
THE BARMAID WITH GONORRHOEA
To the tune 'The Pub with no Beer' otherwise 'Beautiful Dreamer'
It's a bastard away from a woman and all,
With a pain in the guts from a great lover's ball,
But there's nothing so lonesome, morbid or queer,
Than to knock off a barmaid who's got gonorrhoea.
Now the publican's anxious for the chemist to come,
He's looking with lust at the barmaid's big bum,
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer,
"Without a French letter you'll get fuck all here."
The swaggy strolls in undoing his fly,
Saying "Give me a poke or I'll spit in your eye,"
The stockman jumps up and says "Don't do it mate!"
But the swaggy replies "It's too fucking late."
Ther's a dog on the verandah, still suffering from shock,
He's just seen the size of old Billy's cock,
He hurries for cover and he cringes for fear,
Billy's sure to root something - I'm moving from here!
Old Billy the blacksmith, first time in his life,
Goes home with a hard to his darling wife,
But the smile on his face quickly turns to a sneer,
"Without a French letter you'll get fuck all here."
Collected from TD, Cairns, December 1972. In 1944 Dan Sheehan, a
farmer and bush poet living near Ingham in Queensland had one of his
poems A PUB WITH NO BEER printed in a local newspaper, the North
Queensland Register.
This was taken, without acknowledgement, by a professional song
writer, rewritten and fitted with a tune based on 'Beautiful Dreamer'
Re-titled THE PUB WITH NO BEER, it became instantly popular and
netted a fortune for its promoters, though not for its originator.
A parody in itself, it was in turn parodied by other. The first example
being probably the best know. Brad Tate has collected an almost identical
version.
29
THE PUB WITH NO DIKE
To the tune 'The Pub With No Beer'
I'll tell you a story, it happened to me,
A new pub had opened and the beer it flowed free,
I'd had several drinks and was full of mad talk,
Mother Nature came calling and I went for a walk.
There were blokes going out, there were blokes coming in,
And the racket they made was a Hell of a din,
I spoke to a swaggy we all know as Ike,
And he sadly told me "The pub has no dike."
So I wandered out back in the chilly night air,
And saw about twenty more blokes out there,
Some yodelling, some cursing, but say what you like,
They wouldn't be there if the pub had a dike.
Then I got quite a scare and my heart gave a thump,
I thought Bill the blacksmith was only a stump,
He got up and cursed me and said "Dirty dog,
"Why don't you go elsewhere and run off your grog?"
'Twas then the top button broke off of my pants,
And they fell down and tripped me in a nest of green ants,
I yahooed and yakkied and boy, did I hike,
I couldn't care less if the pub had no dike.
I ran back inside over bottles and kegs,
My trousers like hobbles, still tripping my legs,
My mates poured some whiskey where my rump it was hot,
And the old spinster barmaid dropped dead on the spot.
Then a big drunken cowboy, eyes bulging like buns,
Said "I'll fix those ants boy!" and drew both his guns,
The first shots he fired rang out through the night,
And the sting of the bullets hurt worse than the bites.
I got such a fright that I ran from the hall
And jumped on my pushbike, no trousers and all,
And vowed I'd make sure as I peddled that bike,
That the next pub I go to really does have a dike.
See the notes above. This is another parody of a popular Australian
song THE PUB WITH NO BEER. It appeared in the Sydney Bush Music
Club publication Singabout 1961, Vol 4 No. 2. Oddly enough it brought
forth outraged protests from shocked readers, and Singabout never
repeated the experiment of printing anything in the slightest way bawdy.
30
THE BASTARD STEPHEN
A mountain maid sat in a glen
Seducing herself with a fountain pen,
The fountain pen broke and the ink ran wild
And she was delivered of a blue-black child.
Chorus:
And they called the bastard Stephen,
They called the bastard Stephen,
And they called the bastard Stephen,
For he was a blue-black child.
This song was collected in Brisbane, Queensland 9th 3une, 1973, from
a lady who had learned it while serving in the Womens Army during the
1939-45 war. She gave the tune as being "Follow her to London, as we
have done before". It is better known as "So early in the Morning" and
was used as the tune to a number of Australian bush songs in the last
century. It was revived during the last war and was also used for a song
"I heard it on the Radio."
My informant wrote down the text of this song for me, and used the
spelling 'Stephen', explaining that this was a well known brand of ink,
however Brad Tate suggests that the proper spelling is "Stevens Ink". Tate
has also collected a version of this song but where my informant
considered that this was the complete item his considered it to be only a
single verse of a longer ballad, but could unfortunately not supply any
more of it. His verse went -
The maiden sat in the mountain glen,
Abusing herself with a fountain pen,
The ink-bag burst and the ink ran wild,
And the maid was blessed with a blue-black child.
And they called the bastard Steven etc.
D.H. Johnson added these notes.
"(The Bastard Stephen) is a popular army song, commonly known as
The Ringadangdoo, which is described in one verse as a 'round furry thing
with a hole in the middle' i.e. a vagina. Presumably the Stephen refers to
Stephens' Blue-black ink. Tate is correct in supposing that it is a fragment
of a longer song, from memory of six or seven stanzas, of which I can
recall only two:
A fair young maid sat in a glen
Seducing herself with a fountain pen,
The lid came off, and the ink ran wild,
And she gave birth to a blue-black child.
31
Chorus:
And they called the bastard Stephen
They called the bastard Stephen,
They called the bastard Stephen,
For he was a blue black child.
Now Stephen grew as other kids do
And he was the cause of seduction too,
And many a puss was black and blue
Because of that bastard Stephen.
THE THRESHING MACHINE
Now back in the country when I was a boy
Courting of Rosy was my pride and joy,
Rosy was pretty, just seventeen,
When I showed her the works of my threshing machine.
Now she came up to our place, the weekend to stay,
And up in the attic we played in the hay,
It stood there all rosy, both orange and green,
When she played with the works of me threshing machine.
She said that she'd show me just how the thing worked,
And the whole flaming contraption went into reverse,
Went through the barn wall in a big cloud of steam,
Bent all the head of me threshing machine.
Now from all this trouble a lesson I found,
If you're up in the attic and there's women around,
Tie up their hands if you know what I mean,
If you show them the works of your threshing machine.
Collected at Holloway Beach, 15th December, 1972, from 'Buddy'
Weston, a performer who had spent some years travelling around Australia
with Country and Western shows. He said that he had seldom bothered to
learn any bawdy parodies, as he was always frightened of absent-mindedly
breaking into one during his stage act. He added that this fear, plus a
conviction that his fly buttons were all undone, were his main worries
during his stage performance.
He claimed to have composed this item but Brad Tate has pointed out
that it is in fact a major reworking of a British folk song of the same
name.
32
THE DOG'S PARTY
(also known as THE DOG'S MEETING)
The dogs all had a party,
They came from near and far,
Some they came by aeroplane,
And some by motor-car.
And when they arrived
Each one had a look,
Each had to take his arseole off
And hang it on a hook.
And hardly were they seated there,
Each mother, son and sire,
When a dirty little yellow dog
Began to holler "Fire!"
Out they rushed in panic,
They didn't stop to look,
Each dog he grabbed an arseole
From off the nearest hook.
And that's the reason why you see,
On walking down the street,
Each dog will stop and swap a smell
With every dog he meets,
And that's the reason why a dog
Will leave a good fat bone
To go and smell an arseole
In the hope it is his own.
This song was collected from Allan Miller of Mossman, Queensland,
15th December, 1972. He could only recall the first verse in full, and
fragments of the rest, so I have drawn on the version collected by
Meredith (Folk Songs of Australia, 1967) to complete the second and third
verses.
The text of the ballad appears to have been quite well known, and
fragments of it are often recalled by elderly informants, though I have yet
to collect a complete version. I have been told by one of my informants
that it was composed by Henry Lawson, and Meredith has also encountered
this belief amongst his informants, though there is no proof of it being so,
33
THE WIRY OLD BUSHMAN
A wiry old bushman with burrs in his socks
Fucked an old black gin and caught the black pox,
He swore his revenge would be dreadful to see,
He'd tie the black bitch to the roots of a tree,
With her heels in the air and her head in the grass,
His poisoned old cock he'd shove up her arse.
He searched all the country, he rode low and high,
But never a sign of those blacks did he spy,
'Til mustering one day and riding around,
He came on some tracks still fresh on the ground,
He rode at the gallop, not sparing his horse,
'Til he found the blacks camped on an old watercourse.
He stood in the saddle and looked over the mob,
'Til his bleary eye lit on the dirty old swab,
With a terrible yell he grabbed the black bitch,
Made her fast to the tree with a Barcoo half-hitch.
With head in the grass and heels in the sky,
He smiled to himself and unbuttoned his fly,
And pulled out his cock twice its usual size,
It was terribly rotten and blown with flies.
He stroked it a minute 'twixt finger and thumb,
Then shoved it right up to his guts in her bum,
She first gave a wriggle and then gave a groan,
"Aha!" said the bushman, "I'm holding my own! "
She wriggled again, and sad to relate,
His doodle broke off and stayed in her date.
He managed to fork out his balls with a stick
But the crows had to fight for the rest of his prick.
Collected from D.H.Johnson, Torrens Creek, Queensland, 14th March,
1972, who in turn had learned it from his father. Brad Tate has also
recorded a shorter version of this called THE WILD HAIRY BUSHMAN,
collected from Allan Scott. It would appear to be a widely distributed
recitation, at least in the western areas of Queensland, and possibly the
sheep country of New South Wales.
My informant's father had been a shearer and this piece, together
with THE SHEARER'S LAMENT will probably be found to be current in all
areas worked by shearers.
Although its sentiments are particularly unpleasant it apparently does
not have the same effect on everyone. My informant recalled being
present when his father recited this piece to a hired hand, whereupon the
hand dropped down onto a log, tears of emotion coursing down his cheeks,
and gasped out between sobs, "Please say that again - it's the most
beautiful thing I have ever heard."
34
THE MOONLIGHT RIDE
Come lads round the campfire, draw near and sit down,
And I'll tell you my latest since leaving the town,
I'd been there a fortnight and felt rather blue,
So I thought I'd ride out and find work for to do.
It came into my mind, while on the main track,
I'd find work rather slack as I made my way back,
But while passing a station I saw with delight,
A maiden as fair as e'er blessed a man's sight-
Dark blue were her eyes, gold and fair was her hair,
Her figure and form with Venus I'd compare,
"Well madam" says I "I am bound for the bush,
Pardon my rudeness, but I'm not on the rush.
"But I've seen all the sights in the city I passed through,
And I'm looking for work, have you any to do?
I follow up stock work, and stock riding too,
And I never saw scrub that I couldn't race through.
"On an unbroken filly I'll jump on its back,
And in less than ten minutes have a broken-in hack.
Or if with an outlaw that rises in mid-air,
I'll in with my spurs, I'm a gluepot when there."
"Well young man" says she "With me you can muster,
I can see by your style that no outlaw can bust yer,
Your ways are so willing I'm sure you're not slow,
Your face is so handsome I cannot say no.
"And the time that you called just suits me you see,
For my regular stockman is away on a spree,
My stock is neglected, my work is undone,
Just follow me here and I'll show you my run."
I followed her in, saw the slip-panels raise,
And close to the knee bends two pretty calves grazed.
Higher up then I saw where some stays were undone,
Lay two pretty milkers, all spotted and dun.
I took from my stable my mettlesome steed,
He's only a pony, but still he's no weed,
As she stroked down his mane he throbbed with delight,
His head grew erect, he was ready for flight.
So we felt our way gently, going down bosom lane,
And I gave him his head when we struck belly plain,
He reared and he throbbed and then struck at the bit,
But I gave him his head, for he felt pretty fit.
35
Then down a slight incline, through some maiden-head brush,
He started and went through the scrub with a rush,
On then he went, and no spur did he need,
He had bone and condition, and came of good breed.
But the time and the pace began for to tell,
And I reined him in gently to give him a spell,
We stopped for ten minutes, it was not any more.
And we started off again, as fresh as before.
It was glorious and grand in that paddock to race,
With two lips perfumed blowing straight in your face,
Two stars in the north shining brilliant and strong,
And a half-breath whispering "Love, sock it along."
"Well" she said "Young man you have done well today,
And you're welcome to muster whenever my stockman's away,
But I'm sure you are weary, and your steed it is bent,
And my run it is stocked to the fullest extent."
So I pulled off my pony and washed him down well,
Put him back in the stable, for he wanted a spell,
And I leave to the next ringer who musters this land,
A colt in the yard with a strange looking brand.
Collected in Camooweal, Queensland, 25th July 1965, from the
reciting of a Territorian cattleman. This ballad seems to have been
popular among the older generation of cattlemen, and a shorter version
from another informant appears in my Australian Folk Songs The Rams
Skull Press, 1972.
D.H.Johson adds "THE MOONLIGHT RIDE may have a much older
provenance than the 19th century. There is an Elizabethan bawdy ballad
of similar format, with the genitals being parodied by horses and wells.
36
FANNY BAY
With a couple of little drinks to make us happy,
And a couple of little beers to make us gay,
And a couple of little gins to keep our strength in,
You'll find yourself at last in Fanny Bay.
Some are white and some are black and some are yellow,
And some are old and some are young and gay,
But what costs you thirty bob in Castlereagh Street,
You can get for two and six in Fanny Bay.
This was one of the type of slightly bawdy songs that the late Bill
Harney used to enjoy singing, partly perhaps to shock the staid city types
he encountered when he came south for a holiday from The Northern
Territory, A well known author and bushman he was, at the time I met
him, acting as curator of Ayers Rock.
I first heard him sing this song in 1957, and he said it was very
popular around the Northern Territory. It goes to the tune "Galway Bay".
Line three is a play on words, the suggestion being that the white who
consorts with native gins might find himself in Fanny Bay - at that time
the site of the Darwin Jail.
The last two lines compare the prices charged by prostitutes in
Castlereagh Street, Sydney with those of Darwin in the Northern
Territory.
DIRTY JIMMY
Get off dirty Jimmy, and don't tear me clothes,
For oft as you do it, it's you I will expose,
For you are the very man I do so much disdain,
For you need not come flattering, you shan't come back again.
So he wrote to her an answer, just for to let her know,
That love it would creep where it never would grow,
And the green leaves would wither, and the flowers would decay,
And the beauty of a fair maid would soon fade away.
So cupid sent an answer and now she feels a pain,
And she wrote to him an answer "You may come back again."
So she wrote to him an answer, just for to let him know,
That he could come again at any time or go,
He wrote to her an answer which wounded her at last,
So she said to him again that it might come again to die.
37
A most frustrating item as my informant considered it to be a very
bawdy song, though as it happened he could only remember the clean
parts. I taped this from him as he lay in a Roman Catholic hospital
recovering from an eye operation. At one stage a hospital orderly moved
a wheelbarrow containing two rubbish tins along the verandah and left it
in front of the ward door. Old Steve refused to continue singing for some
time, until the tins were moved, convinced that they were a pair of nuns
come to eavesdrop.
I suggested that it did not sound very rude, but he insisted that it
was, and that it was just his bad memory adding "Where it sounds a bit
funny you can fill all that in with smut."
I feel that it is worthy of inclusion as some other collector may have
collected the meatier portions of the song. Collected from Steve Lewis,
B.I887, of Chillagoe, Queensland on 23rd June, 1970. He had learned it
while working as a stockman in the Upper Burdekin area of North
Queensland.
THE GIRL ON BONDI BEACH
"Oh show me the way to go home"
Said the girl on Bondi Beach,
"I had a little swim-suit 'bout an hour ago,
And it floated out of reach,
Now all I have on now,
Is sand and sea and foam,
So give me a page of the Courier Mail,
And show me the way to go home."
Collected from Tony Davis of Fruitgrove, Queensland, i 1th April,
1970. This is a parody on the well known "Show me the way to go Home".
An amusing trifle, it seems to have spread itself all over Australia,
getting slightly altered from place to place. In this version for instance
the beach mentioned is Bondi, a famous surfing beach in Sydney, but the
newspaper seized on by the girl is the Brisbane Courier Mail, a paper
known to the singer though-printed over seven hundred kilometres from
Bondi Beach.
D.H.Johnson adds "'The Girl on Bondi Beach' in this format appeared
in the Queensland University Songbook of 1955 et. seq. Which probably
explains the appearance of the Courier Mail in the song - the protection
of the public from impudical sights is a role for which the paper would
seem to be well-suited".
38
LAKESIDE LAMENT
I'll sing you a song of what's come to pass,
The opening of the lake which was really a farce,
There was our Prime Minister with a rocket up his arse,
At the opening of Lake Burley Griffin.
The diplomats' eyes popped out of their sockets,
As they admired the silvery tails of the rockets,
But I thought of the silver from the taxpayers' pockets,
At the opening of Lake Burley Griffin.
Well around the lake I took a tour,
And I smelt a smell that smelt like manure,
Till I recalled that the lake was an open sewer,
That is known as Lake Burley Griffin.
Some words were said by the man from Interior,
If you swim in the lake you must risk diphtheria,
Scurvy and syphilis and other bacteria,
With the water of Lake Burley Griffin.
Well I looked at the lake and I saw the craft,
And my stomach it turned in knots and laughed,
A gondola, a paddleboat and a disposals raft,
And a canoe in Lake Burley Griffin.
You can sail on the lake if you've a yacht,
But if you've a speedboat you may not,
The Platypus'll up you like a shot,
Disturbing the peace of Lake Burley Griffin.
If you look after your health much less than you oughter,
Then Canberra's the place to come with your daughter,
We've orals in the beer and fluoride in the water,
To say nothing of Lake Burley Griffin.
Collected September 1968 from Don Laycock of Canberra who also
claimed authorship. It goes to the tune "John Peel". Lake Burley Griffin,
an artificial lake in the centre of Australia's National Capital, was named
after the architect who laid out the plans for the city.
My informant wrote out the words for me and added on the bottom
"Written at the opening of the Lake in 1964, an event celebrated with the
usual fireworks and bullshit. The 'Platypus' is the police speedboat - a
good name since it means "flatfoot" in Greek.
39
COBB AND CO STATION
To Hell and damnation with Cobb & Go's station,
You get neither water nor grass'
And bloody McQuiggan wants fucking and frigging,
And shoving up Cobb and Co's arse.
This is more of a curse than a poem, and it seems to have been
widely known in Queensland. The coaching firm of Cobb and Co, was
founded by an American, Freeman Cobb in 1853, and soon became the
most famous coaching name in Australia. It continued operations until
1924.
When and how the first firm came to take up a pastoral holding I
have not been able to ascertain, but the station still exists on the
Diamantina River, Queensland, 300 kilometres south-west of Winton.
Each time I have collected this item I have also been given an insight
into the life of the pastoral worker around the turn of the century. One
oldtimer told me that he had first heard it at Blackall in 1907, and at
that time there would often be sixty teams camped along the river close
to the town, with around one thousand horses between them!
Another told me that the brand of the station was COB, but that this
did not consist of three letters as it appears. According to him the stock
laws insist that a brand should consist of two letters and a number (or
symbol), and this brand is actually spoken of as C-nought-B.
Dan Nicholson, Charters Towers, 12th December 1969, one of my
reliable informants, said that he actually saw these lines written up on the
door of the Mens' Hut on Cobb and Co station around 1905. He was
working as a bullock driver's offsider at the time, though only 12 years
old, and said that he could drive a team of twenty bullocks single handed
at the age of 11!
He explained that Paddy McQuiggan, the manager, would not give
the bagmen a handout of food, a customary gesture at that time, and one
of them wrote these lines on the door.
40
THE DYING HARLOT 1.
Oh, a strapping young harlot lay dying,
A pisspot supporting her head,
And all the young bludgers were 'round her
As she leaned on her left tit and said.
"I've been stuffed by the Dutchies and Negroes,
I've been stuffed by the Spaniard so tali,
I've been stuffed by the English and Irish,
In fact, I've been fucked by them all.
So wrap me up in foreskins and frenchies,
And bury me deep down below,
Where all those young bludgers can't catch me.
The place where all good harlots go."
THE DYING HARLOT 2.
A dirty old harlot lay dying,
A piss-pot supporting her head;
All around her the bludgers were crying,
As she leant on her left tit and said:
"I've been fucked by the French and the English
The Germans, the Japs and the Jews,
And now I've come back to Australia
To be buggared by bastards like youse.
So haul back your filthy old foreskins
And give me the pride of your nuts!"
So they hauled back their filthy old forskins
And played 'Home Sweet Home' on her guts.
THE DYING HARLOT 3.
The dirty old harlot lay dying,
A cunt-rag supported her head,
The blowflies around her were buzzing,
As she turned on her left tit and said:
"I've been fuckead by the army and navy,
By a bull-fighting toreador,
By Abos and dingoes and dagos,
But never by blowflies before."
One of the most popular Australian bush ballads was THE DYING
STOCKMAN, a local re-make of a British song WRAP ME UP IN MY
TARPAULILN JACKET or THE OLD STABLE (SABLE) JACKET. The text
lent itself to parody, and so we have also had THE DYING SHEARER,
THE DYING FETTLER, THE DYING BAGMAN, THE DYING AVIATOR,
THE DYING SLEEPER CUTTER and so on.
I first heard the DYING HARLOT in Geelong, c.1940 in a version
closest to that given here as No.l. It was very popular among the lads of
the area. The present versions come from Snatches and Lays.
BETTING THE ROLL ON ROMA
The old man sat in the grandstand chair,
There was shit in his whiskers and lice in his hair,
And his voice rang out on the evening air,
"She'll win at a walk by Jesus!"
"The breed is good and pace ain't slow,
She's out of Starvation by Hungry Joe,
And of the field she'll make a show,
She'll win at a walk by Jesus."
"Just you wait till he lets her loose,
She'll tear through the field like shit through a goose,
Just like an ace spot beating a deuce,
She'll win at a walk by Jesus!"
Coming round the turn the bitch was third,
She mopped up the second then slipped on a turd,
The fucking old bitch slipped into a ditch,
She wasn't in it by Jesus.
This song was collected from 'Tiger' O'Shane 4th May, 1973, Holloways
Beach, Qld. A retired waterside worker, he was a rich source of yarns
and ballads, but knew very few bawdy items. This was unexpected
considering his many years on the wharf, yet two of my equally valuable
informants also worked on the wharf most of their lives and could not
recall any bawdy items at all.
He said that this song was a parody on a well known song of the
1920's "Betting the Roll on Roma", Roma being a racehorse.
Brad Tate comments that a version of this song was also collected by
42
John Meredith under the title HUNGRY JOE.
She must be fast for she can't be slow
Out of Black Bess by Hungry Joe,
They're off! She's in front, the son-of-a-cunt!
She's slipped on a turd - she's run into third,
Now she's fell in the ditch, the son-of-a-bitch,
And she's lost the race, by Jesus.
DINKY DI
He went up to London and straight way he strode
To army headquarters on Horseferry Road,
To see all the bludgers who dodge all the straff,
By getting soft jobs on the headquarters staff.
Chorus;
Dinky-die, dinky-die,
By getting soft jobs on the headquarters staff.
The lousy lance-corporal said: "Pardon me, please,
You've mud on your tunic and blood on your sleeve;
You look so disgraceful that people will laugh,"
Said that lousy lance-corporal on headquarters staff.
The digger just shot him a murderous glance;
He said: "We're just back from the shambles in France,
Where whizbangs are whining and bullets are flying,
And brave men are dying for bastards like you".
The story soon got to the ears of Lord Gort,
Who gave the whole matter a great deal of thought;
He awarded the digger a V.C. and bars
For giving the corporal a kick in the arse.
This was a popular song among First War diggers, and it is still quite
well known among the older generation. I collected it in Melbourne in
1957. It goes to the tune 'Sweet Betsy from Pike'.
43
DINKY DI (WORLD WAR II VERSION)
A digger proceeded on fourteen days leave,
When a fucking great provost said "Pardon me please,
You've got mud on your tunic and blood on your sleeve,
I'll just have to cancel your fourteen days' leave."
Chorus: Dinky-di, dinky-di
You can kick me to death if I tell a lie.
Well that digger just glared with a murderous look,
And he said I'm just back from the seige of Tobruk,
Where whizz-bangs are flying and comforts are few,
And brave men are dying for bastards like you.'
Chorus: Dinky-di, dinky-di
You can kick me to death if I tell a lie.
When mothers have babies they have them with ease,
Harlots have abortions and they call them M.P.'s,
You can do as you like, you can do as you please,
They're all fuckin' bastards, the fuckin' M.P.'s.
Chorus: Dinky-di, dinky-di
You can kick me to death if I tell a lie,
(The above song was collected for me by D.H. Johnson who also provided
the notes and comments. See the previous page for the older version,)
"This version was collected from a serving soldier, Cairns, September
1973. There is one oddity in the version on the previous page that would
indicate that it is an updated version of a World War 1 song adjusted to
World War II. Lord Gort, mentioned in the last stanza, was
Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in France from 1939 until after
Dunkirk.
"The title provost refers to the Military Police (M.P.) no more popular
as symbols of authority than are their civilian counterparts. A common
omnibus insult, but most frequently used against the Military Police goes;
I'll sing you a song, and it shouldn't take long,
All provosts are bastards.
I sing you anothery just like the othery,
All provosts are bastards.
"For 'provost' insert whichever arm or service one wishes to insult!"
44
CRAVEN A
Now gather round you fellows and if you'll be still
I'll tell you of a bastard born at Bellevue Hill,
Born at Bellevue Hill, but raised in Camberwell,
And the first three words he spoke were "Bloody Fucking Hell!"
Chorus:
Craven A, never heard of fornication,
Craven A, never had wet dreams,
Craven A, quite content with masturbation,
Fooling with his foreskin in the school latrines.
When he went to Geelong Grammar there was much ado,
He buggared all the prefects and the masters too,
He was rusticated, so the records say,
For tossing off the Duke of York on Founder's Day.
His arrival at the Varsity was quite grotesque
He went and laid his penis on his tutor's desk,
Said his tutor "If it lies there in its normal state
Let me know so I can use it as a paper weight!"
Said his tutor - "There is one thing that I must impress
You must never masturbate in academic dress."
But Craven, just to show he didn't care a fuck,
Tossed off into the inkwell, crying "One for luck!"
Now Milly, his landlady's daughter, small and wee,
Brought up her cunt each morning with his cup of tea,
She'd been up the stock so often that the courts declare
Her vagina constitutes a legal thoroughfare.
Now Susie was a prostitute from Melbourne Town,
She gamarouched a Proctor in his cap and gown,
The Proctor wrote to Craven saying "Pack your things,
The shooting season opens on the twelfth at King's."
When Craven joined the army, he was much admired,
Although he shot his gun each night, he never tired,
They took up a collection for this famous bloke,
Who'd deftly change his hand and never lose a stroke.
This title comes from a brand name, Craven A cigarettes, and goes to
the tune "Steamboat Bill". I have no clue to its oriin, but it would appear
to be a university song. The unrelated place names (Bellevue Hill is in
N.S.W., the other localities are Victorian) and general run of the song
make me suspect that this is a local reworking of a British song. It
comes from Snatches and Lays.
D.H. Johnson noted "Craven A, the name of a popular brand of
cigarette, and a play on the public school practice of naming boys by
surname and initial, is a Cambridge song, popular in Australian
45
Universities. I have never heard it adjusted to local place names.
"It has another chorus, alternated with the version given previously,
after every other stanza:
Craven A, never heard of fornication
Craven A, silly little fool
Craven A, quite content with masturbation
Thought a cunt was something you were called at school!
PULL ME DUNGAREES DOWN
Pull me dungares down, sport,
Pull me dungarees down -
I'm that sort of a gal, pal,
So pull me dungarees down-
Go back and wait your turn, Ern,
Go back and wait your turn;
You've got a lot to learn, Ern,
So get back and wait your turn.
Put away that prick, Mick,
Put away that prick;
The sight of it makes me sick, Mick,
So put away that prick.
Well, I'll have to say hooroo, Blue,
I'll have to say hooroo;
You've already had two, Blue,
So I'll have to say hooroo.
You've gone and given me the jack, Mac,
You've gone and given me the jack;
So I'll just give it back, Mac,
You've gone and given me the jack.
Come this way for a thrill, Bill,
Come this way for a thrill;
If you don't come then I will, Bill,
So come this way for a thrill.
Oh, fuck me till I'm red, Ted,
Fuck me till I'm red;
On the floor or in the bed, Ted,
Just fuck me till I'm red.
Let's have one on the grass, Darce,
Let's have one on the grass;
You can whop it up my arse, Darce,
Let's have one on the grass.
46
Well, when I turn it on, Don,
I really turn it on;
Come away from Ron, Don!
'Cos now I'm turning it on.
Come and see me again, Ben,
Come and see me again;
But remember to say when, Ben,
Come and see me again.
For God's sake do up your fly, Guy!
For God's sake do up your fly!
Do you wanna wait till it's dry, Guy?
For God's sake do up your fly!
Well, you sure took more than you gave, Dave,
You sure took more than you gave;
Do you think that I'm your slave, Dave?
You sure took more than you gave.
Why are you all smiles, Giles?
Why are you all smiles?
You got rid of your piles, Giles?
No wonder you're all smiles!
For Christ's sake go away, Ray,
For Christ's sake go away;
It's the end of the month today, Ray,
So for Christ's sake go away.
You know I can't say no, Joe,
You know I can't say no;
So sock it in and blow, Joe,
You know I can't say no.
A parody on a popular song of the early 1960s TIE ME KANGAROO
DOWN. The composer of this latter song, Rolf Harris, said in an ABC
interview (25th July, 1973) that he had created the song in calypso style,
his inspiration being DON'T TIE ME DONKEY DOWN THERE.
This ballad came from Snatches and Lays. After the first edition of this
book came out Don Laycock, Australian National University, wrote,
August 18th. 1981, to say this was his composition.
47
THE KINGS CROSS HARLOT'S BALL
Well I fucked in Cuba and I fucked in Spain,
And I fucked all over the Spanish Main,
But the best fuck of them all,
Was when I fucked my mother-in-law,
Last Saturday night at the Kings Cross harlots' ball.
Without her pants on!
Well, they lined a hundred shielas up against the wall,
And I bet five quid I could fuck them all,
But, when I got to ninety-eight,
I thought my poor prick would break.
So I went down town and had some oyster stew,
And then came back and did the other two.
And now I'm feeling fine,
Got fuckin' right off my mind,
The other night at the Kings Cross harlots' ball.
And then I went on down to hell,
'Cos me and Nick we get on well;
I asked him for a glass of water -
When he went out I fucked his daughter.
When he came back with the glass
I shoved that thing right up his arse,
And if you think that was a joke,
You should have heard my penis croak,
Last Saturday night at the Kings Cross harlots' ball.
To the tune 'The Darktown Strutters Ball'. The reference is to Kings
Cross in Syndey. From Snatches and Lays.
D.H.Johnson comments "'The King's Cross Harlots' Ball was taught to
me at State School in the forties, with Jesse James as the hero".
THE ROAD TO GUNDAGAI
There's a crack winding back
From her belly to her back
On the road to Gundagai;
There's a Yank there beside her,
You bet your balls he'll ride her,
Beneath the starry sky.
With a frenchie on his big prick,
He'll ride her with ease,
As he scratches up the gravel,
With both of his knees;
Though the time will come to pass
When he'll whop it up her arse
On the road to Gundagai.
A parody on a song of the 1940s of the same name, this was obviously
composed during the Pacific war when there was a certain amount of ill
feeling directed towards American troops because of their apparent
amorous success with local girls. From Snatches and Lays.
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THE COMBO'S ANTHEM
When the stock panel slants to the last narli beast,
And the smoke signals rise we will ride to the feast,
Where the pandanus fairies are singing their song,
And the black ducks are mating, by quiet billabong.
'Neath black velvet banners we'll carve our way through,
As we march to the strains of a didgeridoo,
We love and we laugh as pale introverts sigh,
We sneer at Protectors, whose laws we defy.
We know each girl's name by her track on the sand,
The girls of the inland, the girls of inland,
The maids of the mountains, and Lord I forgot -
The sirens of seashores, the best of the lot.
They are comely and dark, and the glint of their eyes,
Are as dew drops that gleam on a wintry sun's rise,
And the firm rounded breasts that seductively tease,
Are like seed pods that sway on squat boabab trees.
So hail Borroloola! The old V.R.D.
The 'Nash' and the hill for a cracker old spree,
We are riding with cheques and we sing as we come,
For a gut full of wooing, a gut full of rum.
Let gin-shepherds watch when the rain clouds appear,
And the ring of horse bells tells his girls we are near,
He may lock up his studs, but we'll steal them away,
To our smouldering fires till the breaking of day.
So green is the grass when the early rains fall,
And pull off pack bags as we answer the call,
We will ride down bush tracks, and old friendships renew,
To the beat of a tab-stick and didgeridoo.
A Combo is a derogatory term, current in the tropical ares of
Australia, especially the Northern Territory, for a white man who has
frequent sexual encounters with native women.
This song was collected from the late Bill Harney, well known
Northern Territory character, Ferntree Gully, 1957. It is sung to the tune
'Sweet Betsy from Pike.'
According to Tom Ronan (Once there was a Bagman Cassell, 1966)
this song was written by another Northern Territory character, 'Raparee'
3ohnson, whose nickname came from a horse that he had raced during the
1880s.
The song was inspired by an incident that occurred during the
1914-18 war when Raparee wrote to the recruiting authorities on behalf of
himself and a group of veterans in the Halls Creek area of Western
Australia. All healthy and in their late fifties or sixties they wished to be
enlisted in the Light Horse to act as 'Number Fours', - horse-holders when
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dismounted operations were under way.
An answer came back to them in due course, and they thought that
it might have been written by an Army Chaplain, thanking them for the
offer of their services, but pointing out that they would be serving a more
useful function by staying where they were and taking care of the wives
and children of their young mates who had gone to the war.
This letter was the cause of great amusement in the Halls Creek pub,
situated as it was in an area where white women were a rarity, and
everyone speculated on the slim chances of tracking down all the enlisted
mens 'wives' and half-caste children, who were probably on walkabout
with their various tribes.
It was suggested that the old timers should take care of all the wives
that they could catch. This incident was supposed to have given Raparee
the inspiration for THE COMBOS ANTHEM a song about the pleasures of
life with Aboriginal women.
THE SHEARER'S LAMENT
I was shearing outback on a wayside track,
And a cunt of a place by 3esus,
Where the trees are tall and the gins are small,
And there's never a thing that pleases.
I was worked over first and we buggered and cursed,
The sheep, the shed and the engine,
And the penner-up, with his sore-eyed pup,
Him with crabs - hear the bastard wingeing.
The rouseabout was a pommy lout,
And the boss was a hungry bastard,
I hamstrung more than me penmate shore -
It was go while the cutters lasted.
The expert cunt with his tools all blunt,
And the headgear shook to pieces,
But I kept my place in that louse-bound race,
And minced up the fucking fleeces.
He wanted more wool so he made us pull,
We bloody near had to scrape 'em,
God strike me blue! What a man should do
Is jump on the bastard and rape him.
I struck a blow at a poor old yoe,
But the skin on her guts was all rotten,
And I cursed and I swore as her shitbag tore,
And reached for the needle and cotton.
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As I stopped to stitch the dirty old bitch,
I was snobbed, I was fucked, I was mastered,
So I kicked her arse down the let-go pass,
"Get out! You rotten old bastard!"
There was rams he fetched had their arsoles stretched,
Like an old gin's penis cleaner,
My pen-mate strained till his shirt got stained,
And his arse went off like a geyser.
How the boss would rip with his tin of dip!
He was up to his knees in maggots,
But he didn't know that with one mighty blow,
I'd took of his prize ram's agates.
I was sick and sore of that bastards roar,
He was one of those cunts that grizzles,
So I got a set on those stags of his,
And littered the board with their pizzles.
The presser slim had his mind on quim,
His bales were all tattered and broken,
So the classer swine made up his time,
And kicked his arse as a farewell token.
The greasy cook with his sore-eyed look,
And the matter all stuck to his lashes,
He stuffed our holes with his half-baked rolls,
And he'd poison Christ with his hashes.
If you see me back in this wayside shack,
I'll be broke to the world and cringing,
He can jam the lot up his big brown blot,
And start with the fucking engine!
An extremely popular piece among bush workers, I have collected at
least five versions of this ballad, and have drawn on them all to assemble
as complete a text as possible. An interesting point about this piece
which I have only ever heard as a recitation is that it has a verse in
common with THE CANE CUTTERS' LAMENT which is both sung and
recited, (the description of the cook). It therefore follows that this ballad
could be sung to the same tune, and yet I have never heard of this being
done.
A considerable number of shearing terms occur in this ballad. The
Expert attends to the machinery and sharpens the cutters for the shearers.
The Classer's job is to grade the wool, while the Presser packs it into
bales ready for shipment. The Penner-up penned the sheep ready for the
shearers, while the rouseabout was the most menial of the labour force,
sweeping up, carrying fleeces to the classer and so on.
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PIDDLING PETE
A farmer's dog came into town,
His Christian name was Pete,
A noble pedigree had he,
To see him was a treat.
And as he trotted down the street
'Twas beautiful to see,
His work on every corner,
His work on every tree-
He watered every gateway too,
And never missed a post,
'Cause piddling was his speciality,
And piddling was his boast.
The city curs looked on amazed,
With deep and jealous rage,
To see a simple country dog,
The piddler of the age.
Some thought that he a king might be,
Beneath his tail a rose,
So every dog drew near to him,
And sniffed him up the nose.
They sniffed him over one by one,
They sniffed him two by two,
And noble Pete with high disdain,
Stood still till they were through.
They called for champion piddlers,
From all about the town,
Pete only smiled, and polished off,
The ablest, white or brown.
Then Pete went piddling merrily,
With hind leg lifted high,
While most were lifting legs in bluff,
And piddling mostly dry.
And just to show the whole shebang,
He didn't give a damn,
He walked into a grocer's shop,
And piddled on a ham.
He piddled on a mackerel keg,
He piddled on the floor,
And when the grocer kicked him out,
He piddled through the door.
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Then Pete did freehand piddling,
With fancy flirts and flits,
With double dip, and gimlet twist,
And all the latest hits.
And when Pete at last left town,
They asked what did defeat us,
But what they didn't know was that
Poor Pete had diabetes.
Collected Holloway Beach, 31st July 1973. While working on this
collection I had a power point fitted in my office, and as the electrician
balanced on a ladder he recited this piece for me, which he described as
an old bush poem.
THE BUFFALO SHOOTER'S SONG
If you ever go up north among the buffalo,
Then maybe at the closing of the day,
You will sit and listen to those flamin' mossies,
And watch the sun go down on Fannie Bay.
For again to hear the crying of the curlew,
And the lubras in their nagas salting hides,
And to sit around the campfire by an evening,
And listen to those shooters telling lies.
For the gins come down from Oenpelli Mission,
All wrapped up in Jesus when they come,
But they soon forget about those Ten Commandments,
When you hit 'em with a snort of O.P.Rum.
And the strangers came and tried to take our lubras -
So we waited while they had their fun,
For they might have tried to catch the old red dingo,
Or rape a flamin' emu on the run.
And if ever there should be a piccaninny,
You can bet your boots it won't be all real black,
For those shooters like their little bit of nonsense,
Along the Alligator River Track.
This song is said to have been composed by a group of buffalo
shooters at Nourlangie, Northern Territory, 1948. It goes to the tune
'Galway Bay' and comes from The Green Eyes are Buffaloes by Allan
Stewart, Lansdowne, 1969.
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SUNDAY SCHOOL SONG
Young folks old folks everybody come,
To our little Sunday School and make yourself at home,
Bring your toffee apples and sit upon the floor,
And I'll tell you Bible stories that you've never heard before.
Adam was the first man he lived all alone,
Till Eve was created out of Adam's collar bone,
Now poor old Adam has no further cause to grieve,
He gets up in the morning and he slips a length up Eve.
Jonah was a prophet with a tendency to sail,
He took a tourist ticket on a transatlantic whale,
The atmospheric pressure got too heavy for his chest,
So Jonah pushed the button and the whale he did the rest.
Pharaoh had a daughter with a most bewitching smile,
She found the infant Moses in the rushes by the Nile,
She took him home to dear papa he believed the tale,,
Which was just about as probable as Jonah and the Whale.
Ruth she was a flapper of a very modern type,
She wore short skirts and she rode a motor bike,
She shook her wicked lipstick, her eye was at the glad,
Salvation Army saved her though from going to the bad.
Solomon and David lived very wicked lives,
They had a thousand girl friends beside a thousand wives,
Later on in life their consciences had qualms,
One wrote the prophets the other wrote the Psalms.
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Esau was a hairy man from the wild and woolly west,
His father gave him half his crown, his brother Jake the rest,
His succession to the title not being very clear,
He swapped the whole caboodle for a sandwich and a beer.
Samson was a fighter from the down and uppem school,
Slew forty thousand Phillipinos with the ass bone of a Jew,
A pretty maid named Dinah got him bottled up with gin,
She sold him for a nickel 'cos the bastard filled her in.
Goliath was a hefty man, big and strong and tall,
David was a littler man, the handy man of Saul,
David took a sling and half a brick as well,
When he pulled the trigger, well Goliath went to Hell.
Aaron and the Israelites had a tendency to laugh,
So they opened up a night club which they called the Golden Calf,
'Cause the Cops got wind of it, arrested all the lot,
Chief Inspector Moses got promotion on the spot.
Yogi was the first man he lived all alone,
Till a saucy little bat clamped upon his bone,
Now poor old Yogi is very rarely seen,
He's cracking rocks in Stuart Creek, she wasn't seventeen.
Now our little Sunday School has finished for the day,
I hope you're feeling better in every kind of way,
I know it sounds much better if we do it all in verse,
Next Sunday night at half past eight the choir will rehearse.
This was given to me by George White, a professional Cairns
fisherman, October 2nd, 1973, who in turn had obtained the words from a
friend in Charters Towers.-. Although it is doubtless international in
distribution some of the verses are undoubtedly Australian in origin. My
informant commented that this is the sort of song that allows singers to
include verses made up upon the spot, usually poking fun at other
members of the party.
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THE MUNICIPAL DUNNY MAN
The municipal dunny pan was full up to the brim,
The municipal dunny man fell in and couldn't swim!
And as he was a-sinkin', just sinkin' like a stone,
You could hear the maggots calling "There's no place like home!"
Chorus:
Yippee yi yea - Yippee yi yoo
There's maggots in the poo...
The municipal Fire Brigade was first upon the scene,
And then the Mulgrave Shire brigade with firemen tall and lean,
They gazed into the murky depths and slowly shook their heads,
For they heard the maggots calling "Your dunny man is dead!"
They went and got a big long rope and threw it in the poo,
They called out to the dunny man "Hang on we'll pull you through,"
But the maggots chewed the rope in half and he fell back down below,
And they heard the maggots singing "How sweet the breezes blow!"
A volunteer fireman was lowered to the brink,
He wore his respirator 'cause he couldn't stand the stink,
He gazed down at the murky depths and slowly shook his head,
'Cause he couldn't see the dunny man and knew that he was dead!
There was a big long funeral with coffin long and tall,
It had to be that way, you see, 'cause they buried pan and all!
And as the cortage moved along they all knew what was comin'
For the maggots they were singing and the dunny man was humming!
The local dunny man, who used to be known officially as the night
soil collector, has always been a figure of fun in Australian rural
communities and many jests have been made at his expense.
One of his Christmas traditions was to leave small poems soliciting
gifts on the seat of each toilet he serviced. My late father-in-law's
answer to one of these poetic request was to leave a wooden spoon on the
seat tied up with pink ribbon and a note saying "Help yourself."
The present song was collected from professional Cairns fisherman,
George White, October 4th, 1973. It goes to the tune: 'Ghost Riders In
The Sky'.
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