FullReads

“Chorus! you —!”

They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the
grandest ever seen
They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery
shape be-tw-e-e-n.
There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they
could be–

“Ow! you —“

The singer’s voice or memory seemed suddenly to have failed him at this point, but whether his mates hit him on the back of the head with a tomahawk, or only choked him, I do not know. Mitchell was inclined to think, from the sound of it, that they choked him.

[The end]

————————————–

Some definitions and Australian slangs:

anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream. The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then rejoins. See billabong.

Barcoo-rot. “Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands, and often originating in abrasions”. (Morris, Australian English). Barcoo is a river in Queensland.

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.

blackfellow: condescending for Australian Aboriginal

blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers’ strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab.

blanky or — : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for “bloody”–see crimson/gory.

blooming: actually used in speech instead of “bloody” (see crimson).

bluey: swag. Explanation in Lawson’s “The romance of the Swag” here.

bob: one shilling

bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed.

bummer: A cadger or bludger. Someone who begs for food. Interesting Americanism already. Also, tramp. (Different meaning today)

bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions (cf. `mulga’ and `mallee’), and hence equivalent to “outback”. Now used generally for remote rural areas (“the bush”) and scrubby forest.

bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires.

bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, “in the bush”. (today: a “bushy”)

bushranger: an Australian “highwayman”, who lived in the `bush’– scrub–and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures–cf. Ned Kelly–but usually very violent.

bunyip: Aboriginal monster, inhabiting waterholes, billabongs particularly. Adopted into European legends.

caser: Five shillings (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound (“quid”)). As a coin, a crown piece.

chaffing: teasing, mocking good-humouredly

churchyarder: Sounding as if dying–ready for the churchyard = cemetery

crimson = gory: literary substitutes for “bloody”–the “colonial oath”, unacceptable in polite company. Why, is a complete mystery. Popularly explained as contraction of “by Our Lady”. Unproved. In reproducing (badly) a German’s pronunciation of Australian, Lawson retains the word, but spells it “pluddy”.

dood: Dude. A classy/cool dresser.

drover: one who “droves”

droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.

fiver: a five pound note

gory: see crimson

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney

humpy: rough shack

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown.

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)–someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. “ranch”.)

jim-jams: the horrors, d.t.’s

jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: “where’s that jolly jumbuck, you’ve got in your tucker bag”.)

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang (“push”). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880’s to 1900. The Bulletin, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the “aggressive, soft-hatted stoush brigade”. Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character.