She'll Be Right

DESCRIPTION: "When you're hunting in the mountains and your dog puts up a chase" and a boar attacks, you'll eventually get pork. When you learn you dropped your socks in the beer you were brewing, there's a fix. And so forth. "So don't worry, mate, she'll be right."
AUTHOR: Peter Cape (1926-1979) (source: Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ)
EARLIEST DATE: 1964 (source: Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ)
KEYWORDS: humorous disaster drink dog hunting technology
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, pp. 225-227, "She'll Be Right" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Roger Steele, editor, _An Ordinary Joker: The Life and Songs of Peter Cape_ (book with accompanying CD), Steele Roberts, Aotearoa, New Zealand, 2001, pp. 60-61, "She'll Be Right" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [289 words]: According to Garland-FacesInTheFirelight-NZ, this song is an "unofficial national anthem." I'm including it in the Index on that basis, though I know of no field collections. (It may be based on Peter Cape's own hopes; Cape/Steele, p. 21, says he wrote it with that idea in mind.) There is a 1979 recording by the Canterbury Bush Orchestra (a group which included Phil Garland) which implies the song has been folk processed a little. Garland does print several verses written by people other than original author Peter Cape. Cape himself recorded it on the EP "She'll Be Right" (Kiwi EA 54) around 1964.
The phrase "She'll Be Right" is certainly a folk phrase; Ell, p. 232 says that it "Epitomises the laid-back Kiwi attitude to problems or challenges. At best it reflects the positivism of the American expression 'No worries' or 'Don't worry.' At worst, and more frequently, it reflects a less-than-perfectionist attitude to getting things right."
The use of "she" for "it" is a common New Zealandism; NewZealandDictionary, p. 244, entry on "she," item 1, says the word is "Applied to things (both material and immaterial) to which femaleness is not conventionally attributed, often replacing the impersonal pronoun it." This leads to "the use of she'll be and she's with complements to introduce common idiomatic phrases expressing confidence or reassurance in an outcome," of which "she'll be right" is an example.
Don Toms, Cape's musical mentor, was an immigrant to New Zealand from Britain, arriving at Wellington in 1958, where he saw a banner saying "She'll Be Right" hung across the customs shed. It sounds, based on Cape/Steele, p. 21, as if he told Cape about this experience, and Cape produced this song as a result. - RBW
Bibliography

Cape/Steele: Roger Steele, editor, An Ordinary Joker: The Life and Songs of Peter Cape (book with accompanying CD), Steele Roberts, Aotearoa, New Zealand, 2001
Ell: Gordon Ell, Kiwiosities: An A-Z of New Zealand traditions & Folklore, New Holland Publishers, 2008
NewZealandDictionary: Elizabeth and Harry Orsman, The New Zealand Dictionary, 1994; second edition 1995 (I use the 2003 New House Publishers paperback)

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File: Garl225

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