Chapter IV: Preface (4)

The world might wobble round the sun, an’ all the banks go bung,
But pipes’ll smoke an’ liquor run while Auld Lang Syne is sung.
While men are driven through the mill, an’ flinty times is struck,
They’ll find a private entrance still!
Here’s Luck, old man--Here’s Luck!

THE MEN WHO COME BEHIND

There’s a class of men (and women) who are always on their guard--
Cunning, treacherous, suspicious--feeling softly--grasping hard--
Brainy, yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track--
Cautiously they feel their way behind a bolder spirit’s back.

If you save a bit of money, and you start a little store--
Say, an oyster-shop, for instance, where there wasn’t one before--
When the shop begins to pay you, and the rent is off your mind,
You will see another started by a chap that comes behind.

So it is, and so it might have been, my friend, with me and you--
When a friend of both and neither interferes between the two;
They will fight like fiends, forgetting in their passion mad and blind,
That the row is mostly started by the folk who come behind.

They will stick to you like sin will, while your money comes and goes,
But they’ll leave you when you haven’t got a shilling in your clothes.
You may get some help above you, but you’ll nearly always find
That you cannot get assistance from the men who come behind.

There are many, far too many, in the world of prose and rhyme,
Always looking for another’s ‘footsteps on the sands of time.’
Journalistic imitators are the meanest of mankind;
And the grandest themes are hackneyed by the pens that come behind.

If you strike a novel subject, write it up, and do not fail,
They will rhyme and prose about it till your very own is stale,
As they raved about the region that the wattle-boughs perfume
Till the reader cursed the bushman and the stink of wattle-bloom.

They will follow in your footsteps while you’re groping for the light;
But they’ll run to get before you when they see you’re going right;
And they’ll trip you up and baulk you in their blind and greedy heat,
Like a stupid pup that hasn’t learned to trail behind your feet.

Take your loads of sin and sorrow on more energetic backs!
Go and strike across the country where there are not any tracks!
And--we fancy that the subject could be further treated here,
But we’ll leave it to be hackneyed by the fellows in the rear.

THE DAYS WHEN WE WENT SWIMMING

The breezes waved the silver grass,
Waist-high along the siding,
And to the creek we ne’er could pass
Three boys on bare-back riding;
Beneath the sheoaks in the bend
The waterhole was brimming--
Do you remember yet, old friend,
The times we ‘went in swimming?’

The days we ‘played the wag’ from school--
Joys shared--and paid for singly--
The air was hot, the water cool--
And naked boys are kingly!
With mud for soap the sun to dry--
A well planned lie to stay us,
And dust well rubbed on neck and face
Lest cleanliness betray us.

And you’ll remember farmer Kutz--
Though scarcely for his bounty--
He leased a forty-acre block,
And thought he owned the county;
A farmer of the old world school,
That men grew hard and grim in,
He drew his water from the pool
That we preferred to swim in.

And do you mind when down the creek
His angry way he wended,
A green-hide cartwhip in his hand
For our young backs intended?
Three naked boys upon the sand--
Half buried and half sunning--
Three startled boys without their clothes
Across the paddocks running.

We’ve had some scares, but we looked blank
When, resting there and chumming,
One glanced by chance along the bank
And saw the farmer coming!
And home impressions linger yet
Of cups of sorrow brimming;
I hardly think that we’ll forget
The last day we went swimming.

THE OLD BARK SCHOOL

It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes
Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool;
And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks--
There was little need for windows in the school.

Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully track,
On the old grey horse that carried three or four;
And he looked so very wise that he lit the master’s eyes
Every time he put his head in at the door.

He had run with Cobb and Co.--‘that grey leader, let him go!’
There were men ’as knowed the brand upon his hide,’
And ’as knowed it on the course’. Funeral service: ‘Good old horse!’
When we burnt him in the gully where he died.

And the master thought the same. ’Twas from Ireland that he came,
Where the tanks are full all summer, and the feed is simply grand;
And the joker then in vogue said his lessons wid a brogue--
’Twas unconscious imitation, let the reader understand.

And we learnt the world in scraps from some ancient dingy maps
Long discarded by the public-schools in town;
And as nearly every book dated back to Captain Cook
Our geography was somewhat upside-down.

It was ‘in the book’ and so--well, at that we’d let it go,
For we never would believe that print could lie;
And we all learnt pretty soon that when we came out at noon
‘The sun is in the south part of the sky.’

And Ireland! _that_ was known from the coast line to Athlone:
We got little information _re_ the land that gave us birth;
Save that Captain Cook was killed (and was very likely grilled)
And ‘the natives of New Holland are the lowest race on earth.’

And a woodcut, in its place, of the same degraded race
Seemed a lot more like a camel than the black-fellows we knew;
Jimmy Bullock, with the rest, scratched his head and gave it best;
But his faith was sadly shaken by a bobtailed kangaroo.

But the old bark-school is gone, and the spot it stood upon
Is a cattle-camp in winter where the curlew’s cry is heard;
There’s a brick-school on the flat, but a schoolmate teaches that,
For, about the time they built it, our old master was ‘transferred.’

But the bark-school comes again with exchanges ’cross the plain--
With the OUT-BACK ADVERTISER; and my fancy roams at large
When I read of passing stock, of a western mob or flock,
With ‘James Bullock,’ ‘Grey,’ or ‘Henry Dale’ in charge.

And I think how Jimmy went from the old bark school content,
With his ’eddication’ finished, with his pack-horse after him;
And perhaps if I were back I would take the self-same track,
For I wish my learning ended when the Master ‘finished’ Jim.

TROUBLE ON THE SELECTION

You lazy boy, you’re here at last,
You must be wooden-legged
Now, are you sure the gate is fast
And all the sliprails pegged
And all the milkers at the yard,
The calves all in the pen?
We don’t want Poley’s calf to suck
His mother dry again.

And did you mend the broken rail
And make it firm and neat?
I s’pose you want that brindle steer
All night among the wheat.
And if he finds the lucerne patch,
He’ll stuff his belly full;
He’ll eat till he gets ‘blown’ on that
And busts like Ryan’s bull.

Old Spot is lost? You’ll drive me mad,
You will, upon my soul!
She might be in the boggy swamps
Or down a digger’s hole.
You needn’t talk, you never looked
You’d find her if you’d choose,
Instead of poking ’possum logs
And hunting kangaroos.

How came your boots as wet as muck?
You tried to drown the ants!
Why don’t you take your bluchers off,
Good Lord, he’s tore his pants!
Your father’s coming home to-night;
You’ll catch it hot, you’ll see.
Now go and wash your filthy face
And come and get your tea.

THE PROFESSIONAL WANDERER

When you’ve knocked about the country--been away from home for years;
When the past, by distance softened, nearly fills your eyes with tears--
You are haunted oft, wherever or however you may roam,
By a fancy that you ought to go and see the folks at home.
You forget the family quarrels--little things that used to jar--
And you think of how they’ll worry--how they wonder where you are;
You will think you served them badly, and your own part you’ll condemn,
And it strikes you that you’ll surely be a novelty to them,
For your voice has somewhat altered, and your face has somewhat changed--
And your views of men and matters over wider fields have ranged.
Then it’s time to save your money, or to watch it (how it goes!);
Then it’s time to get a ‘Gladstone’ and a decent suit of clothes;
Then it’s time to practise daily with a hair-brush and a comb,
Till you drop in unexpected on the folks and friends at home.

When you’ve been at home for some time, and the novelty’s worn off,
And old chums no longer court you, and your friends begin to scoff;
When ‘the girls’ no longer kiss you, crying ‘Jack! how you have changed!’
When you’re stale to your relations, and their manner seems estranged;
When the old domestic quarrels, round the table thrice a day,
Make it too much like the old times--make you wish you’d stayed away,
When, in short, you’ve spent your money in the fulness of your heart,
And your clothes are getting shabby.... Then it’s high time to depart.

A LITTLE MISTAKE

’Tis a yarn I heard of a new-chum ‘trap’
On the edge of the Never-Never,
Where the dead men lie and the black men lie,
And the bushman lies for ever.

’Twas the custom still with the local blacks
To cadge in the ‘altogether’--
They had less respect for our feelings then,
And more respect for the weather.

The trooper said to the sergeant’s wife:
‘Sure, I wouldn’t seem unpleasant;
But there’s women and childer about the place,
And--barrin’ a lady’s present--

‘There’s ould King Billy wid niver a stitch
For a month--may the drought cremate him!--
Bar the wan we put in his dhirty head,
Where his old Queen Mary bate him.

‘God give her strength!--and a peaceful reign--
Though she flies in a bit av a passion
If ony wan hints that her shtoyle an’ luks
Are a trifle behind the fashion.

‘There’s two of the boys by the stable now--
Be the powers! I’ll teach the varmints
To come wid nought but a shirt apiece,
And wid dirt for their nayther garmints.

‘Howld on, ye blaggards! How dare ye dare
To come widin sight av the houses?--
I’ll give ye a warnin’ all for wance
An’ a couple of ould pair of trousers.’

They took the pants as a child a toy,
The constable’s words beguiling
A smile of something beside their joy;
And they took their departure smiling.

And that very day, when the sun was low,
Two blackfellows came to the station;
They were filled with the courage of Queensland rum
And bursting with indignation.

The constable noticed, with growing ire,
They’d apparently dressed in a hurry;
And their language that day, I am sorry to say,
Mostly consisted of ‘plurry.’

The constable heard, and he wished himself back
In the land of the bogs and the ditches--
‘You plurry big tight-britches p’liceman, what for
You gibbit our missuses britches?’

And this was a case, I am bound to confess,
Where civilisation went under;
Had one of the gins been _less_ modest in dress
He’d never have made such a blunder.

And here let the moral be duly made known,
And hereafter signed and attested:
We should place more reliance on that which is shown
And less upon what is suggested.

A STUDY IN THE “NOOD”

‘A sailor named Grice was seen by the guard of a goods train lying
close to the railway-line near Warner Town (S.A.) in a nude
condition. He was unconscious, and had lain there three days,
during one of which the glass registed 110 in the shade. _Grice
expressed surprise that the train did not pick him up._’--Daily
paper. In consequence, the muse:--

He was bare--we don’t want to be rude--
(His condition was owing to drink)
They say his condition was nood,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think
(We mean his _condition_, we think,
’Twas a naked condition, or _nood_,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think)

Uncovered he lay on the grass
That shrivelled and shrunk; and he stayed
Three hot summer days, while the glass
Was one hundred and ten in the shade.
(We nearly remarked that he _laid_,
But that was bad grammar we thought--
It _does_ sound bucolic, we think
It smacks of the barnyard--
Of farming--of _pullets_ in short.)

Unheeded he lay on the dirt;
Beside him a part of his dress,
A tattered and threadbare old shirt
Was raised as a flag of distress.
(On a stick, like a flag of distress--
Reversed--we mean that the tail-end was up
_Half-mast_--on a stick--an evident flag of distress.)

Perhaps in his dreams he persood
Bright visions of heav’nly bliss;
And artists who study the nood
Never saw such a study as this.
The ‘luggage’ went by and the guard
Looked out and his eyes fell on Grice--
We fancy he looked at him hard,
We think that he looked at him twice.

They say (if the telegram’s true)
When he woke up he wondered (good Lord!)
‘Why the engine-man didn’t heave to--
Why the train didn’t take him aboard.’
And now, by the case of poor Grice,
We think that a daily express
Should travel with sunshades and ice,
And a lookout for flags of distress.

A WORD TO TEXAS JACK

Texas Jack, you are amusin’. By Lord Harry, how I laughed
When I seen yer rig and saddle with its bulwarks fore-and-aft;
Holy smoke! In such a saddle how the dickens can yer fall?
Why, I seen a gal ride bareback with no bridle on at all!
Gosh! so-help-me! strike-me-balmy! if a bit o’ scenery
Like ter you in all yer rig-out on the earth I ever see!
How I’d like ter see a bushman use yer fixins, Texas Jack;
On the remnant of a saddle he can ride to hell and back.
Why, I heerd a mother screamin’ when her kid went tossin’ by
Ridin’ bareback on a bucker that had murder in his eye.

What? yer come to learn the natives how to squat on horse’s back!
Learn the cornstalk ridin’! Blazes!--w’at yer giv’n’ us, Texas Jack?
Learn the cornstalk--what the flamin’, jumptup! where’s my country gone?
Why, the cornstalk’s mother often rides the day afore he’s born!

You may talk about your ridin’ in the city, bold an’ free,
Talk o’ ridin’ in the city, Texas Jack, but where’d yer be
When the stock horse snorts an’ bunches all ’is quarters in a hump,
And the saddle climbs a sapling, an’ the horse-shoes split a stump?

No, before yer teach the native you must ride without a fall
Up a gum or down a gully nigh as steep as any wall--
You must swim the roarin’ Darlin’ when the flood is at its height
Bearin’ down the stock an’ stations to the great Australian Bight.

You can’t count the bulls an’ bisons that yer copped with your lassoo--
But a stout old myall bullock p’raps ’ud learn yer somethin’ new;
Yer’d better make yer will an’ leave yer papers neat an’ trim
Before yer make arrangements for the lassooin’ of _him_;
Ere you’n’ yer horse is catsmeat, fittin’ fate for sich galoots,
And yer saddle’s turned to laces like we put in blucher boots.

And yer say yer death on Injins! We’ve got somethin’ in yer line--
If yer think your fitin’s ekal to the likes of Tommy Ryan.
Take yer karkass up to Queensland where the allygators chew
And the carpet-snake is handy with his tail for a lassoo;
Ride across the hazy regins where the lonely emus wail
An’ ye’ll find the black’ll track yer while yer lookin’ for his trail;
He can track yer without stoppin’ for a thousand miles or more--
Come again, and he will show yer where yer spit the year before.
But yer’d best be mighty careful, you’ll be sorry you kem here
When yer skewered to the fakements of yer saddle with a spear--
When the boomerang is sailin’ in the air, may heaven help yer!
It will cut yer head off goin’, an’ come back again and skelp yer.

P.S.--As poet and as Yankee I will greet you, Texas Jack,
For it isn’t no ill-feelin’ that is gettin’ up my back,
But I won’t see this land crowded by each Yank and British cuss
Who takes it in his head to come a-civilisin’ us.

So if you feel like shootin’ now, don’t let yer pistol cough--
(Our Government is very free at chokin’ fellers off);
And though on your great continent there’s misery in the towns
An’ not a few untitled lords and kings without their crowns,
I will admit your countrymen is busted big, an’ free,
An’ great on ekal rites of men and great on liberty;
I will admit yer fathers punched the gory tyrant’s head,
But then we’ve got our heroes, too, the diggers that is dead--
The plucky men of Ballarat who toed the scratch right well
And broke the nose of Tyranny and made his peepers swell
For yankin’ Lib.’s gold tresses in the roarin’ days gone by,
An’ doublin’ up his dirty fist to black her bonny eye;
So when it comes to ridin’ mokes, or hoistin’ out the Chow,
Or stickin’ up for labour’s rights, we don’t want showin’ how.

They come to learn us cricket in the days of long ago,
An’ Hanlan come from Canada to learn us how to row,
An’ ‘doctors’ come from ’Frisco just to learn us how to skite,
An’ ‘pugs’ from all the lands on earth to learn us how to fight;
An’ when they go, as like or not, we find we’re taken in,
They’ve left behind no larnin’--but they’ve carried off our tin.

THE GROG-AN’-GRUMBLE STEEPLECHASE

’Twixt the coastline and the border lay the town of Grog-an’-Grumble
In the days before the bushman was a dull ’n’ heartless drudge,
An’ they say the local meeting was a drunken rough-and-tumble,
Which was ended pretty often by an inquest on the judge.
An’ ’tis said the city talent very often caught a tartar
In the Grog-an’-Grumble sportsman, ’n’ retired with broken heads,
For the fortune, life, and safety of the Grog-an’-Grumble starter
Mostly hung upon the finish of the local thoroughbreds.

Pat M‘Durmer was the owner of a horse they called the Screamer,
Which he called the ‘quickest shtepper ’twixt the Darling and the sea;’
And I think it’s very doubtful if the stomach-troubled dreamer
Ever saw a more outrageous piece of equine scenery;
For his points were most decided, from his end to his beginning,
He had eyes of different colour, and his legs they wasn’t mates.
Pat M‘Durmer said he always came ‘widin a flip av winnin’,’
An’ his sire had come from England, ’n’ his dam was from the States.

Friends would argue with M‘Durmer, and they said he was in error
To put up his horse the Screamer, for he’d lose in any case,
And they said a city racer by the name of Holy Terror
Was regarded as the winner of the coming steeplechase;
But he said he had the knowledge to come in when it was raining,
And irrelevantly mentioned that he knew the time of day,
So he rose in their opinion. It was noticed that the training
Of the Screamer was conducted in a dark, mysterious way.

Well, the day arrived in glory; ’twas a day of jubilation
With careless-hearted bushmen for a hundred miles around,
An’ the rum ’n’ beer ’n’ whisky came in waggons from the station,
An’ the Holy Terror talent were the first upon the ground.
Judge M‘Ard--with whose opinion it was scarcely safe to wrestle--
Took his dangerous position on the bark-and-sapling stand:
He was what the local Stiggins used to speak of as a ‘wessel
‘Of wrath,’ and he’d a bludgeon that he carried in his hand.

‘Off ye go!’ the starter shouted, as down fell a stupid jockey--
Off they started in disorder--left the jockey where he lay--
And they fell and rolled and galloped down the crooked course and rocky,
Till the pumping of the Screamer could be heard a mile away.
But he kept his legs and galloped; he was used to rugged courses,
And he lumbered down the gully till the ridge began to quake:
And he ploughed along the siding, raising earth till other horses
An’ their riders, too, were blinded by the dust-cloud in his wake.

From the ruck he’d struggled slowly--they were much surprised to find him
Close abeam of Holy Terror as along the flat they tore--
Even higher still and denser rose the cloud of dust behind him,
While in more divided splinters flew the shattered rails before.
‘Terror!’ ‘Dead heat!’ they were shouting--‘Terror!’ but the Screamer hung
out
Nose to nose with Holy Terror as across the creek they swung,
An’ M‘Durmer shouted loudly, ‘Put yer tongue out! put yer tongue out!’
An’ the Screamer put his tongue out, and he won by half-a-tongue.

BUT WHAT’S THE USE

But what’s the use of writing ‘bush’--
Though editors demand it--
For city folk, and farming folk,
Can never understand it.
They’re blind to what the bushman sees
The best with eyes shut tightest,
Out where the sun is hottest and
The stars are most and brightest.

The crows at sunrise flopping round
Where some poor life has run down;
The pair of emus trotting from
The lonely tank at sundown,
Their snaky heads well up, and eyes
Well out for man’s manœuvres,
And feathers bobbing round behind
Like fringes round improvers.

The swagman tramping ’cross the plain;
Good Lord, there’s nothing sadder,
Except the dog that slopes behind
His master like a shadder;
The turkey-tail to scare the flies,
The water-bag and billy;
The nose-bag getting cruel light,
The traveller getting silly.

The plain that seems to Jackaroos
Like gently sloping rises,
The shrubs and tufts that’s miles away
But magnified in sizes;
The track that seems arisen up
Or else seems gently slopin’,
And just a hint of kangaroos
Way out across the open.

The joy and hope the swagman feels
Returning, after shearing,
Or after six months’ tramp Out Back,
He strikes the final clearing.
His weary spirit breathes again,
His aching legs seem limber
When to the East across the plain
He spots the Darling Timber!

But what’s the use of writing ‘bush’--
Though editors demand it--
For city folk and cockatoos,
They do not understand it.
They’re blind to what the whaler sees
The best with eyes shut tightest,
Out where Australia’s widest, and
The stars are most and brightest.

* * * * *

MAY, 1902.

LIST OF BOOKS

PUBLISHED BY

ANGUS & ROBERTSON

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SOLD IN ENGLAND BY

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THE COMMONWEALTH SERIES

Crown 8vo., 1s. each (_post free 1s. 3d. each_).

=ON THE TRACK: New Stories.= _By HENRY LAWSON_

=OVER THE SLIPRAILS: New Stories.= _By H. LAWSON_

=POPULAR VERSES.= _By HENRY LAWSON_

_Now first published in book form._

=HUMOROUS VERSES.= _By HENRY LAWSON_

_Now first published in book form._

=WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=

=First Series.= _By HENRY LAWSON_

=WHILE THE BILLY BOILS: Australian Stories.=

=Second Series.= _By HENRY LAWSON_

=HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA: From the Earliest Times to the Inauguration of the Commonwealth.=

_By A. W. JOSE_

=HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGING.=

_By CHARLES WHITE_

PART I.--THE EARLY DAYS. [_Now ready_ PART II.--1850 TO 1862. [_Now ready_