Poems of Banjo Paterson. Banjo Paterson. Ure Smith.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson was born on the 17th February, 1864 at Narambla, near Orange in New South Wales. He was educated at Sydney Grammar School. At sixteen he matriculated and was articled to a Sydney law firm. Paterson worked as a lawyer but also spent time as a grazier, traveller, journalist, editor, war correspondent, soldier, sportsman and noted horseman. The publication of ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and five other ballads in The Bulletin made ‘Banjo’ a household name. In 1895, Angus and Robertson published these poems as a collection of Australian verse. The book sold 5000 copies in the first four months of publication. In 1903, Paterson married Alice Emily Walker. The Patersons had two children: Grace (1904) and Hugh (1906).
One of Paterson’s best-known poems is ‘Clancy of the Overflow’. It is written in ballad form and is quite good technically:
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 has 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 wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.
Paterson maintains an ABCB rhyme scheme for eight quatrains in this poem. In alternating lines he uses internal rhyme. The effect is that the poem is quite musical in nature. Also, despite its constraints, nothing seems forced or cumbersome. The metaphorical density is still there. In ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ and other ballads in Poems of Banjo Paterson there is unpretentiousness (‘Song of the Artesian Water‘):
But there’s no artesian water, though we’ve passed three thousand feet,
And the contract price is growing, and the boss is nearly beat.
But it must be down beneath us, and it’s down we’ve got to go,
Though she’s bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below.
Sinking down, deeper down,
Oh, we’re going deeper down:
And it’s time they heard us knocking on the roof of Satan’s dwellin’;
But we’ll get artesian water if we cave the roof of hell in –
Oh! we’ll get artesian water deeper down.
The colloquial word ‘dwellin’ gives the poem an unpretentiousness. The schoolboy larrikinism in ‘When Dacey Rode the Mule’ gives the poem its humour. After riding a mule at a school circus, the schoolboy Dacey sets some animals free:
And from the beasts he let escape,
The bushmen all declare,
Were born some creatures partly ape
And partly native-bear.
They’re rather few and far between
The race is nearly spent;
But some of them may still be seen
In Sydney Parliament.
Paterson’s humour is essentially good humour. Paterson achieves variation in tone in Poems of Banjo Paterson. He can be tender when dealing with the death of a fourteen year old boy (‘Only a Jockey’):
Knew he God’s name? In his brutal profanity
That name was an oath – out of many but one.
What did he get from our famed Christianity?
Where has his soul – if he had any – gone?
Fourteen years old, and what was he taught of it?
What did he know of God’s infinite Grace?
Draw the dark curtain of shame o’er the thought of it
Draw the shroud over the jockey-boy’s face.
Paterson achieves a certain poignancy, here. Also, he displays a belief in God. This is also apparent in other poems in Poems of Banjo Paterson (‘A Bush Christening’):
Now this Mike was the dad of a ten-year-old lad,
Plump, healthy and stoutly conditioned;
He was strong as the best, but poor Mike had no rest
For the youngster had never been christened.
And his wife used to cry, “If the darlin’ should die
Saint Peter would not recognize him.”
But by luck he survived till a preacher arrived,
Who agreed straightaway to baptize him.
Paterson displays a devout belief in God and in the routines of Christian life. Paterson displays a devout but not overbearing belief in God. Paterson is never didactic. It is all about technical nous and storytelling in a lucid way. Paterson made it seem easy to write poems that display knowledge and have a sense of craft. Paterson spoke for Australia and did it well.
Michael Byrne 