OLD BUSH SONGS

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 238, 8 October 1934, Page 6

OLD BUSH SONGS

EVOLUTION OF DIGGING DITTIES

(By J.C.)

"An Old Gumdigger," writing to the ''Star" (11/9/34), quoted a verse of a song popular in the North fifty years ago, one of the old "Come-all-yeV that sailors and buslunen and stockmen used to sing and adapt endlessly in the days before everything was standardised and bowdlerised and machine made. The song appealed to "all you gav young fellows who have 110 work to do," to pacn up their blankets and to the wild woods come, To lead a life of liberty, Get a spade and dig tor gum. Tiie words and measure of that doggerel digging ditty struck a vein of memory that set me turning up sundry old-time American and Australian songs 1 had noted down from one source and another, and I think I have unearthed the grandfather of the guinfields chant. This is the song the "keel-boatmen" on the Mississippi and the Ohio chantey'd eighty years ago or more: Come all ye fine young fellows Who've got a mind to range Into some far-off countrYour fortunes for to change. We'll lay us down upon the banks Of the blessed O-hi-o; Through the wild woods we will wander And we'll chase the buffalo! Like marfy another rough-hewn poem ot *lie prairie and the gold diggings, that song reaclud Now Zealand in the gold-rush days of the Otago and YVestland fields; reshaped to lit the new life, and then it came North, and there was a Maori Wars version in which the Maori foe was substituted for buifalo. Then by a natural process of transition and transliteration, it became apparently the song of the gunnligger's spade; I have not heard it, but it is evidently a direct descendant of the Ohio roving song. There is an old Manx sea song dating back to the days of the Napoleonic wars that used to be heard in New Zealand, the "Come-all-ye" ballad that narrated the exploits of the bold young Manxman aboard "the Tiger privateer that cat-ched the Parleyvoo." The tune is the same as that of the "Buffalo" song.

One of William Allingham's songs lias been seized upon eagerly bv sailors and other deft adapters; I heard it sung to a fine lilting tune in an Auckland vessel long ago: I've traded with the Maoris, The Yankees and Chinese. I've courted half-caste beauties Beneath the kauri trees: I've travelled along with laugh and song In the land where they grow mate; Around the Horn and home again, For that Is the sailor's way. That was not a chantey, but a landsman-poet's song of the sen; it became popular in the apprentices' berth in the old clippers of the Now Zealand Shipping Company. Many a chantey proper, too, found its way from the ships to the conning craft, the busli and the gold fields and the gum fields. About 1800, when -so many ship? were carrying diggers to Port Chalmers for the Gabriel's Cully rush, "The Banks of the Sacramento" quickly became "The Colden Land of Otago." Hut the hardest-worked chantey of all, I think, is "Ten Thousand Miles Away." Its versions and perversions must be innumerable. In the sailors' working song there is just a suggestion of Robert Burns' "My Luve is Like a Bed, Bed Bose": And fare thee well, my only luve! And fare thee well a while! And I will come again, my luve. Though it were ien thousand mile. The beautiful poem of Burns can be sung, if you like, to the" familiar tunc of the sailors' chantey, adapted to so many callings, with their local colour. I have heard an old sea captain sing a Dutchman's version of it. There is the convict-ship edition, too, a recording of which may be heard on the radio to-day, a kind of companion ditty to "Botany Bay." The lady "with a Government band around my leg" announces that I'm taking a tri™ in a Government ship Ten thousand miles away. Tt is a Ion? way from "My Luve is Like a Bed, Bed Bose" to the convict lass' lament; still, the latter may be nil illegitimate descendant of the other. * And Burns, in his turn, may .have borrowed liis "ten thousand mile" from one of .the old' broadsheet ballads.

ON THE CHAIN. Four-fifths of the people who keep dogs have not the least right to do so, for the simple reason that they do not know, and will not take the trouble to learn, how to treat them. One is forced to this conclusion, not on account of the recent Alsatian controversy, but by everyday evidence seen and heard around one. This being Animal Week, it is surely a fitting time to put in a plea for dumb creatures in general, and dogs in particular. Many people seem to ignore the fact that a dog, having four legs, was obviously intended to use them, and not to remain chained to a kennel all day. Yet the poor fellow's joyous barks and bounds when let olf the chain might surely teach them differently. It would seem not, however. One woman actually boasted that since her son went away four years previously her dog had never been off the chain. That woman should have been prosecuted for practising slow drawn-out torture, compared with which fox hunting in England and bull fighting in Spain might almost be termed merciful. ]vast summer annoyance was caused to neighbours by the continuous barking of a dog. Investigation proved that the . poor creature was chained 011 a verandah in the blazing sun, without shade or water. Yet the owner would have been affronted had she been told that she did not know how to treat her dog. There is almost always a cause for the constant barking of a chained dog. Probably lie has been kept, on the chain too long, and, suffering from indigestion, wants to get loose in order to seek the grass which he knows by instinct will euro Hum. He may have been left without water; or the bitter wind and driving rain may be blowing right into his kennel, and he is trying to voice his discomfort in the only way lie can. Or, again, his kennel itself may be in .so dirty a state that the poor creature is unwilling to enter it. A dog is a, clean animal, and this is one of the chief reasons why he ought to be allowed a run first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.

The chain need not bo an unmixed evil. If a <log: is allowed a run morning and evening and a sufficiency of exorcise besides, lie will be none the worse for being chained for a few hours, preferably during the beat of the day, and kept in at night. Then all the complaints about sheep worrying, in which the Alsatian is no more to blame than other breeds, would be a thing of- the past. The dog is a hunter by nature, and even a Peke will kill a rat, given the chance. If the daily brushing, exercise and attention necessary to keep a dog in health arc too much trouble for his owner to take, it is plain enough that the said owner has no right to keep a dog at all. B. FORESTER.