Traditional Ballad Verse in Australia

Traditional Ballad Verse in AustraliaAuthor(s): Bill ScottSource: Folklore, Vol. 111, No. 2 (Oct., 2000), pp. 309-313Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1260609 .

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Topics, Notes and Comments 309

ethnicity among the post-Roman peoples of proto-England, questioning simplis- tic notions of mass inward migrations from the "Germanic" continent, and of the supposed inherent "German-ness" of types of metalwork. Unfortunately this project is less advanced than work on the Iron Age, because prehistorians have long been more innovatory and self-critical than their more conservative col- leagues in Roman or Anglo-Saxon studies, who are still catching up. In my opinion, deconstructing the Anglo-Saxon origin myth is at least as important as challenging the notion of the ancient island Celts, but that is for those with the relevant expertise to attempt. Once it becomes possible to write a book like Atlantic Celts covering the English as well, some of the deepest supposed historical justifications for competing nationalist or racist chauvinisms among the island peoples will be undermined; these may not seem a serious threat today, but remain latent among the English in particular, and could break out with disastrous effect, here and elsewhere, if the European Union were to founder in political, ecological or economic crisis.

With regard to Amy Hale's concern at the "alarming sentiments" on the rear cover, this was carefully calculated for a specific reason. To reach and challenge the target audience-non-specialists who "know" the insular past was Celtic-it was necessary to attract media attention. This could only be achieved by following the rules of journalistic discourse, i.e. translating the argument into terms that editors would bite at. Long, and somewhat bitter, experience has taught me that editors simply ignore nuanced arguments; they demand sound- bites, controversy and, ideally, confrontation. The result was the provocative, but carefully worded, jacket text which says that I "consider whether" the Celtic paradigm is false and dangerous. The book actually leads the reader into very different territory, challenging the premises of the debate about our ethnic origins in these islands. In that sense, the jacket does not fully represent the contents-but, for reasons outlined above, I considered this a necessary ruse de guerre to get the book discussed, and then read by the intended audience. As it has just gone into a third printing, I believe that it has proved effective in bringing this unfinished debate to public attention and in challenging received notions of identity in the islands and in general. It has also broken the virtually impermeable membranes between academic disciplines covering the field, re- sulting in some constructive and fascinating exchanges with geneticists and philologists. I think that the latter in particular have great potential for advanc- ing the debate within and beyond academia.

School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester, UK.

Traditional Ballad Verse in Australia

Bill Scott

The transportees, the earliest European settlers in Australia, numbered among them many Scottish and Irish convicts who had been familiar with ballads from their childhood. Stories of tragedies, comical events, battles and clan history



310 Topics, Notes and Comments

were part of their background; mostly composed in the ancient ballad metre, the "severer" so-called, with four stresses in the first line, three in the second and so through the rest of the tale. Often sung to a traditional tune; sometimes with a chorus or refrain so the listeners could participate in the performance; sometimes as a solo rendition of a shorter piece. Always performed because the need was there for some kind of entertainment in circumstances where no other entertainment was available or possible-in the tween-decks of the hulks, the holds of ships, or the huts of the "iron gangs" when they reached their melancholy destination half a world from their native lands.

Small wonder that, when the time came for the versifiers among these unhappy people to compose their own laments at their conditions or their shouts of defiance at the Authority which governed their lives in their new country, they turned to the old familiar form of the ballad to chronicle their responses to circumstance. And of course some of these spoken effusions reminded them of traditional tunes to fit the new words, and the first truly Australian traditional songs were begun and flourished. These were convict-originated songs-lamenta- tions like "The Plains Of Emu," "The Convict Maid," "The Death Of Captain Logan"; shouts of defiance like "Jim Jones At Botany Bay"; praise for outlaws who defied the system like "Bold Jack Donohue" and "The Wild Colonial Boy"'-sim- ple stories set to verse and traditional tunes. Some became so popular that Authority became worried and actually officially banned the singing of the "Donahue" songs in the taverns of Sydney in the 1820s. This of course did not prevent their wide spread, both the "Donahue" song and "Wild Colonial Boy" reached America and have been collected in the field there, and as "The Wild Keelonian Boy" one travelled to Ireland and became well-known there.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, settlement had spread into the interior across the Dividing Range and there was a large population of freed convicts who had finished their sentences or obtained "tickets-of-leave," mixed with the first of the free settlers and the more well-to-do sheep farmers. These men worked as shearers for the flocks, at building fences, as well-sinkers and so on, while others became timbergetters and sealers on the southern islands. Still, they were bereft of entertainment save for what they could make themselves, and poems and songs continued to originate among these folk. A great change began with the discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria, for the enormous influx of folk from many lands who came to the goldfields not only demanded entertainment but also could afford to pay for it. Some of the best theatrical personalities in the world appeared at one time or another to satisfy this demand; but the miners and outback workers continued to create their own kinds of diversions, and the ballad poem flourished. Most of these effusions proved to be ephemeral, but some survived in popular memory, especially the poems and songs about the many gangs of bushrangers who infested the roads and townships at that time, particularly the Hall and Kelly gangs, who seem to have caught the public imagination. Some are still extant in the popular culture. Folk seem to have appreciated the viewpoint of one bushranger in the verse that makes him say:

I never could be found digging nuggets from the ground When the biggest could be picked up in the Bank!




(Incidentally, it was far more dangerous to travel the roads of New South Wales at that time than ever it was in the American so-called Wild West!)

The literary establishment of the time seems to have totally ignored these manifestations of popular culture, or to have denigrated them as being of no interest if by chance they encountered them. The applauded literary works of the period were those which in construction and language most approached European cultural products; this continued even after the Sydney Bulletin was established in the early 1880s and gave an outlet to the products of the amateur versifiers and bards of the backblocks. But the late nineteenth century saw a great revival of the ballad form of verse internationally with the writings of Pret Harte, Charles Leland, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service; and the encourage- ment offered by the acceptance of these enormously popular writers spurred many imitators among the previously discouraged versifiers using the ballad metre. In fact for the next twenty-odd years most poetry published in Australia had a strong flavour of horses! There were exceptions, of course. The quarry and road worker Shaw Neilson was writing delicate lyric verse; and Christopher Brennan and Victor Daley eschewed the popular ballad to compose their own very individual verse, though Daley writing as "Creeve Roe" did turn out some fine balladry.

Along with the composition and publication of this ballad poetry there came into being a whole generation of what Australians called "reciters," folk who entertained by memorising the enormously popular verse of the time and delivering it from stages or around the campfires that still studded the great plains-the camps of the drovers moving mobs of cattle, the gatherings of itinerant workers in the wool industry. "Reciting," an echo of the ancient bards of pre-literary days who recalled and dispensed the ever-popular verses enjoyed by men in isolated circumstances. Until the end of the 1930s at almost every country concert and "social evening," or at dances while the orchestra rested, it was usual for the local "reciter" to entertain his audience with selections from his repertoire. Mostly the poems of A. B. Paterson, A. L. Gordon or Henry Lawson, often including one or two of his own efforts at versifying some local occurrence, probably in lame enough stanzas but to tremendous applause!

For a folklorist interested in spoken entertainment in its many forms there exists a wonderful record of such popular pieces. In the 1920s and 1930s a journalist named A. V. Vennard, under the pen-name "Bill Bowyang," conduc- ted a column in the widely read North Queensland Register, published in Townsville. He called it "Bill Bowyang's Column" and he was interested in the performance of spoken verse. Vennard invited his readers to send in copies of their favourite recitations and normally published such communications in his weekly column. He went further and selected numbers of the most popular "recitations" in a series of six small, cheap booklets called Bill Bowyang Reciters, and a survey of these, published over a number of years gives the interested folklorist an insight into just what kind of poetry was popular to reciters and their audiences early in the century. The result of this study is to show that while most of the verse included is of Australian origin, international poets, particularly Robert Service, were popular also. Many of the poems recorded by Vennard show evidence of the folk process at work, for the poems submitted by his readers had often been learned verbatim from another person, and faulty



312 Topics, Notes and Comments

memories and oral transmission had left their mark. It is interesting to compare the Vennard versions with the original poems and see just where the changes have been made! In some cases there are complete distortions, in others one cannot help feeling that the original has been improved a little. The folklorist R. G. Edwards has in late years made a selection from the poems contained in Vennard's ephemeral booklets and published it as an occasional paper with the title The Lass Who Rode The Rover (Rams Skull Press, 1986).

With the '40s there came a change of direction in the form and content of Australian poetry which has continued with variations to the present time-- literary and published poetry, that is. But it was about that time that "reciters" lost popularity as entertainers and for many post-WW2 years one never encountered them in public performance. Some poets, such as the late Edward Harring- ton, continued to pen significant verse, and some established poets made use of the form for particular poems where it was suitable, but on the whole the literary establishment's attitude mirrored that of their predecessors a century earlier, in that they ignored the phenomenon entirely or reacted patronisingly if they happened to encounter it. Fortunately for folklorists, the folk did not hear what was being said about what they regarded as poetry and continued to write it down when they were emotionally touched or had a good story to tell. Though it never, or hardly ever, achieved public performance, nevertheless it continued as a kind of underground poetic movement. Folk wanted to write poetry and continued to do so, unheard and unregarded.

Unheard and unregarded through the '50s, '60s '70s and '80s save for a few notable outlets. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation during these years from time to time broadcast sessions where listeners submitted verse and these were sometimes read to air by the presenters of the programmes. Verse flooded in to these sessions, one of which, the Hospital Hour, often presented verse from listeners. The other two venues available were the two literary competitions for Bush Verse run annually; one was the Henry Lawson Awards at Grenfell in New South Wales and the other the Bronze Swagman Awards at Winton in the centre west of Queensland. Both these competitions drew huge numbers of entries; both celebrated literary events. Grenfell was close to the birthplace of the poet after whom the competition was named. Winton remembered the composition of Paterson's "Waltzing Matilda," which had its first public airing in that town.

In 1994 came a turning point in the presentation and performance of Bush Poetry with the foundation of the Bush Poets Association which had its first headquarters in the Darling Downs city of Toowoomba. The Association grew rapidly and, while at first sponsors were almost entirely from country shires and towns, Poets Breakfasts and concerts, competitions and performances were widespread across the country. By 1997, when the National Outback Performing Arts organisation along with the city of Longreach celebrated the Outback Muster, there were no fewer than seven categories of spoken verse as well as the literary competition for written verse. The winner of the Open Challenge was sponsored by QANTAS to attend the Cowboy Poets Gathering at Elko, Nevada. (It would appear that a similar movement of traditional verse exists in the United States.)

Despite the tremendous enthusiasm displayed by both poets and listeners, Bush Poetry remains in Australia as it has always done in the eyes of critics and




literary circles. It is fascinating, however, for a folklorist to see the tradition continuing from the unhappy days of the first fleet with little or no encourage- ment from the formal writing scene, a real example of the survival of a folk art despite lack of recognition. The folk want it, need it, and are rewarded by its continuing survival.

Biographical Note Bill Scott is a writer, broadcaster, poet and singer who has published widely on Australian folklore. His books include The Long, and the Short and the Tall: A Collection of Australian Yams, The Complete Book of Australian Folklore, and My Uncle Art. Bill Scott lives in Warwick, Queensland.



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