Come-By-Chance -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

(Poem #1277) Come-By-Chance As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary — For the plot was void of interest — 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact, — There I learnt the true location, distance, size, and population Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act. And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee, And that Booleroi and Bumble get their letters twice a year, Also that the post inspector, when he visited Collector, Closed the office up instanter, and re-opened Dungalear. But my languid mood forsook me, when I found a name that took me, Quite by chance I came across it — "Come-by-Chance" was what I read; No location was assigned it, not a thing to help one find it, Just an N which stood for northward, and the rest was all unsaid. I shall leave my home, and forthward wander stoutly to the northward Till I come by chance across it, and I'll straightway settle down, For there can't be any hurry, nor the slightest cause for worry Where the telegraph don’t reach you nor the railways run to town. And one's letters and exchanges come by chance across the ranges, Where a wiry young Australian leads a pack-horse once a week, And the good news grows by keeping, and you’re spared the pain of weeping Over bad news when the mailman drops the letters in the creek. But I fear, and more's the pity, that there’s really no such city, For there’s not a man can find it of the shrewdest folk I know, "Come-by-chance", be sure it never means a land of fierce endeavour, — It is just the careless country where the dreamers only go. . . . . . Though we work and toil and hustle in our life of haste and bustle, All that makes our life worth living comes unstriven for and free; Man may weary and importune, but the fickle goddess Fortune Deals him out his pain or pleasure, careless what his worth may be. All the happy times entrancing, days of sport and nights of dancing, Moonlit rides and stolen kisses, pouting lips and loving glance: When you think of these be certain you have looked behind the curtain, You have had the luck to linger just a while in "Come-by-chance". -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

             1864-1941

I love parodies of famous poets by other famous poets, so it was a pleasant
thrill, while reading through a collection of poems, to read the opening
line of 'Come-by-Chance'. Raven parodies are a wildly variable lot, but I
had no fears that Paterson would disappoint me, and indeed he has not.

What I didn't expect, though, was that the parodic element would confine
itself to the (brilliant) first two lines. Paterson packs the entire
punchline of his parody into the phrase "'twas the Postal Guide, in fact",
and then, the reader having been supplied the promised laugh, uses the lines
as a springboard into a decidedly *non*-parodic poem.

By the second verse, the poem has taken on more of the air of Turner's
"Romance" [Poem #238], evoking a sense of distance and otherness through its
use of exotic place names - with, perhaps, a dash of Lehrer's "Lobachevsky"
in its recognition of the humorous aspect of those names. By verse three,
the poem is pure Paterson; we recognise and welcome the familiar scenes of
the Australian bush, and the men who inhabit it. And note, in passing, the
similarity between the second half of today's poem and that of "Clancy of
the Overflow" [Poem #566].

Another thing I found fascinating about today's poem is how Paterson uses
the same basic metre as 'The Raven', but by deft use of pacing and secondary
stresses ends up with a very different sounding poem. I've spoken about this
before - the way that some poems manage an almost paeonic metre (four
syllables to a foot, doesn't really exist in English verse) - so here's an
explicit example:

 /   x     /   x    /    x    /   x    /  x    /  x  /   x    /   x
 I shall leave my home, and forthward wander stoutly to the northward

(all stressed syllables equally marked) tends towards

 x   x     /   x  |  x    x    /   x    | x  x    /  x   | x   x    /   x
 I shall leave my   home, and forthward   wander stoutly  to the northward

where I've demoted secondary stresses to unstresses and marked the division
between 'paeonic' feet with a | .

Compare

 /    x \  x  /   x    /  x   /     x  \    x   /    x  /  x
 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary

where the heavier syllables suggest the more trochaic scansion.

(Incidentally, if it hadn't been so long since I last read Derek Attridge's
brilliant "The Rhythms of English Poetry"[1], I might have been able to
better explain it in terms of stress/beat combinations, but it has, so I
won't try.  Anyone with a more confident grasp of Attridge's methods is
encouraged to supply the analysis.)

[1] and really, this is far and away the best book on the subject I've read.
I highly encourage anyone with an interest in prosody to give it a look.

-martin

Links:

  Poe's "The Raven": Poem #85

  One of the benefits of running Minstrels is that it encourages me to surf
  other people's poetry pages. I discovered today's poem on the following
  delightful (and cheerfully labyrinthine) site:
    [broken link] http://tenderbytes.net/rhymeworld/marymenu/favorite.htm

Waltzing Matilda -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

(Poem #1125) Waltzing Matilda Oh! there once was a swagman camped in a Billabong, Under the shade of a Coolabah tree; And he sang as he looked at his old billy boiling, "Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?" Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda, my darling? Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me? Waltzing Matilda and leading a water-bag -- Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me? Down came a jumbuck to drink at the water-hole, Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee; And he sang as he stowed him away in his tucker-bag, "You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me." Down came the Squatter a-riding his thoroughbred; Down came Policemen -- one, two and three. "Whose is the jumbuck you've got in the tucker-bag? You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!" But the swagman he up and he jumped in the water-hole, Drowning himself by the Coolabah tree; And his ghost may be heard as it sings in the Billabong "Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?" -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

Notes: Published as sheet music in 1903. This is Paterson's original version;
I've included a link to the somewhat altered popular version

There is little doubt that Waltzing Matilda belongs in any collection of
immortal narrative verse. As one commentator put it,

    Waltzing Matilda is an Australian icon.  It is quite likely that more
    Australians know the words to this song than the national anthem.  There
    is probably no other song that is more easily recognised by a populace:
    young or old: ocker or a newly arrived immigrant.
      -- http://www.ozramp.net.au/~senani/waltz.htm

and even outside its homeland, it is unquestionably the world's best known
piece of Australian writing. Or perhaps that should be "writing and music",
for the words are inextricably entwined with the tune (I have to wonder how
popular the poem, with its heavy use of Australianisms, would have been
internationally were it not for the delightfully catchy tune - it is
definitely a great poem, but I wouldn't really call it accessible. The tune
has ensured, though, that people do take the time to find out what exactly
all the words mean.)

While I have chosen to run Paterson's original words, I do think the popular
version is in several ways an improvement upon it. (Indeed, while WM is
Paterson's most famous work, it is far from his best). The greatest
improvement is in line two of the last verse - the rather weak

  Drowning himself by the coolabah tree

becomes

  You'll never catch me alive, said he

and lends the song that touch of desperate, defiant romance that was missing
from its earlier incarnation.

martin

Links:

  [broken link] http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/ is a great starting point
  for all things related to the poem

  Biography of Paterson: [broken link] http://www.waltzingmatilda.com/wmbanjo.html

  The popular "Marie Cowan" version of the poem, with annotations:
    http://www.ozramp.net.au/~senani/waltz.htm

  The original "Queensland" version, with sheet music and several midi
  files: http://www.uq.edu.au/~mlwham/banjo/waltzing_matilda.html

  Paterson's handwritten manuscript:
    [broken link] http://waltzingmatilda.com/wmwords.html

  Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda": Poem #981

  The current theme:
    [broken link] http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/58.html

Clancy of the Overflow -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

This week I'll be running a series of Australian poems; thanks to Vikram
Doctor for the suggestion.

(Poem #566) Clancy of the Overflow I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago, He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him, Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow" And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected, (And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar) Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it: "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are." * * * * * * * * * In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know. And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars. * * * * * * * * * I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall, And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street, And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting, Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet. And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste, With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy, For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste. And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy, Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go, While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal -- But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow. -- A B "Banjo" Paterson

Today's choice of poet was easy - Banjo Paterson is far and away the best
known of Australian poets - and not just for his ubiquitous masterpiece
"Waltzing Matilda". His poems of the Australian bush capture the 'feel' of
country (at least from my perspective) vividly - the wide open spaces, the
sweep of the sky reaching down to the horizon, the

                vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
        And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars

are what I mostly associate with the Australia of song and story.

Which brings us to today's poem - a rather straightforward contrast between
the two Australias of open space and city. All brought out in Paterson's
wonderfully flowing verse, with its long, pattering lines and internal
rhymes, drawing the reader in not so much by the imagery as by the sheer
sound of it. Indeed, I would not be too surprised if 'Clancy' has been set
to music; like much of Paterson's poetry, it has a wonderfully musical
quality to it. (Strangely enough, the internym "Banjo" does not stem from
any connection to music; the story, quoted from the biography referred to
below, runs as follows:
  By the time Paterson came to submit his first verses (in 1885) to the
  Bulletin, he had been admitted to the Roll of Solicitors. Paterson
  claimed, afraid to use his own name "lest the editor, identifying one with
  the author of the pamphlet, would dump my contribution, unread, into the
  waste-paper basket...", adopted the pen-name of "The Banjo" after a
  "so-called racehorse" his family had owned - and the legend was born.
)

The other noteworthy element in the poem is Clancy himself, a typically
larger-than-life character of the sort that Australian - and, indeed,
frontier - tradition abounds with. (Another example worth mentioning here is
Paterson's own 'Man from Snowy River'). The contrast between the life of the
drover and that of the townsman is summed up beauifully in the wonderfully
dry last line

    But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.

Notes:

The Lachlan and the Cooper are rivers in New South Wales and Queensland
respectively; the illustrated poem (see the links) includes popup maps of
their courses.

Biography:

There's a nice biography (only one of several; just feed 'banjo paterson
biography' into google) at
 [broken link] http://www.waltzingmatilda.com/wmbanjo.html

I quote one paragraph for its striking parallel with Kipling:

 Today, in some circles, there is a view that Paterson was "the spokesman of
 the squattocracy and the station owners". But this is certainly not true of
 Paterson the balladist and Bulletin sketch writer (even if in his last
 years, took a less impassioned and more detached view of life around him).
 But in his hey-day he wrote about the underdogs of bush and city life. Take
 Waltzing Matilda for example.

Links:

There's an illustrated copy of the poem at
- http://www.uq.oz.au/~mlwham/banjo/clancy_of_the_overflow.html

Taken from the extensive Banjo Paterson site
- http://www.uq.oz.au/~mlwham/banjo/

A rather different poem with a similar theme:
- poem #261

On the Theme:

As usual, guest poems and suggestions are both welcome, as are comments
added to the poems. In fact, given that this is a topic with which I am
relatively unfamiliar, I'd be glad to replace one or more of my selections
with additional guest poems, so any fans of Australian poetry, speak now or
forever hold your piece.

-martin