Jolly Puddlers, The

DESCRIPTION: "They want to stop our puddling, as many of you know, Contractors say that of our slush there is an overflow," but this would cause trouble in Bendigo. The singers claim that digging in the stream banks is all that keeps the local economy going
AUTHOR: Charles R. Thatcher (1831-1878)?
EARLIEST DATE: 1960 (Anderson-ColonialMinstrel)
KEYWORDS: mining river hardtimes
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, pp. 39-40, "The Jolly Puddlers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-GoldrushSongster, pp. 32-33, "The Jolly Puddlers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 48-49, "The Jolly Puddlers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson/Thatcher-GoldDiggersSongbook, pp. 35-36, "The Jolly Puddlers" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Jolly Waggoner" (tune)
NOTES [232 words]: Bruce Moore, Gold! Gold! Gold! A Dictionary of the Nineteenth-century Australian Gold Rushes, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 117, defines a "puddler" as "A person engaged in puddling for gold" (no surprise there), and "to puddle" as "To work (clayey gold-bearing material) with water in a tub so as to separate out the gold from the other material." Moore quotes a different Thatcher song in connection with the practice.
Anderson-ColonialMinstrel, pp. 47-49, clarifies that puddling was a method for extracting gold based on placing large amounts of dirt in a special puddling tub and running a lot of water through it. The gold would settle out; the sludge, from which the gold had been extracted, was washed away -- and polluted the area around the puddling machinery. This led to demands for a solution, and attempts to collect a fee for puddling. Hence Thatcher's song.
It should be noted that there were two ways to puddle, one by machine (a "puddling machine," naturally) and one by hand, with a "puddling tub" (Moore, p. 118). The former allowed the work to proceed much more efficiently, and seems to have been the basis for the complaint in this song, since the "machines" are mentioned several times.
For brief background on Charles Thatcher's career, see the notes to "Where's Your License?" For an extensive collection of his songs, see Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: AnSo039

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography