Castlereagh River, The

DESCRIPTION: "I'm travelling down the Castlereigh, and I'm a stationhand...." The singer mentions all the stops he's made, and all his reasons for leaving (non-union Chinese workers, an arrogant boss, etc.). He advises, "So shift, boys, shift...."
AUTHOR: claimed by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941)
EARLIEST DATE: 1892 (The _Bulletin_)
KEYWORDS: Australia work travel
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia, pp. 45-46, 83-84, "The Old Jig-Jog"; p. 57, "Travelling Down the Castlereagh; pp. 210-211, "A Bushman's Song" (4 texts, 4 tunes)
Meredith/Tritton-DukeOfTheOutback, pp. 93-94, "THe Old Jig Jog" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, "A Bushman's Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fahey-Eureka-SongsThatMadeAustralia, pp. 132-133, "Travelling Down the Castlereigh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, pp. 290-293, "A Bushman's Song" (1 text)
Fahey-Joe-Watson-AustralianTraditionalFolkSinger, [p. 14, page headed "Joe Watson has always..."], "A Bushman's Song" (1 text)
Manifold-PenguinAustralianSongbook, pp. 158-159, "Travelling Down the Castlereigh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 171-173, "A Bushman's Song" (1 text)
Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads, pp. 196-197, "A Bushman's Song" (1 text)
DT, CSTLREAG
ADDITIONAL: A. B. "Banjo" Paterson, "The Works of 'Banjo' Paterson" [with an anonymous introduction], Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1995, pp. 66-67, "A Bushman's Song" (1 text)
Roud #8399
RECORDINGS:
John Greenway, "The Castlereagh River" (on JGreenway01)
NOTES [452 words]: Paterson's title for this was "A Bushman's Song," and this is the title used by Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong and others -- but it is perhaps noteworthy that few traditional singers knew it by that title.... Joe Cashmere, when he supplied a version of the song to John Meredith, believed he learned it before Paterson published the song. But, as Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition note, it's hard to prove it predated Paterson.
What's more, it cannot have preceded Paaterson by much, because of the reference to non-union shearers. According to O'Keeffe, p. 113, the first attempt to unionize shearers came in 1885 -- and it failed. It wasn't until William Spence, who had successfully unionized Australian miners, took charge that progress was made. A decisive factor was a proposal by the owners to cut shearers' pay by an eighth (O'Keeffe, p. 115). The Amalgamated Shearers' Union started to be significant in the late 1880s (O'Keeffe, p. 117), causing some stations to hire non-union shearers. Thus this song, if not by Paterson, still must have been composed at most three or four years before its appearance in The Bulletin. And The Bulletin was where Paterson first made his mark, publishing his works as "The Banjo," without a surname (O'Keeffe, pp. 104-105). I have a certain tendency to doubt authorship claims by Paterson, but I think this one is genuinely his.
The slur on (non-Union) Chinamen shearing is patently unfair. Yes, any Chinese shearers would have been non-Union. But that was not necessarily their choice. "Clause 62 of the rules of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australia specifically stipulated that 'no Chinese or South Sea Islander shall be enrolled as members of A. S. U. of Australia'" (O'Keeffe, p. 167).
Manifold, p. 127, says, "Paterson wrote what he called 'A Bushman's Song' quite early in his career; but he can hardly haveintended what heppened then; for the words got up off the printed page, went bush, and grew themselves a whole set of folktunes there. 'A Bushman's Song' became, without capitals or quotation marks, genuinely a bushman's song."
Davey/Seal, p. 253, say this is usually sung to the tune of the humorous Irish song "Pat from Mullingar." This is a bit of a conundrum. There is a song in the Index, "Pat of Mullingar," which predates this piece, and the tune fits Paterson's lyric -- but it isn't humorous and it isn't the tune Greenway sings. There is another song "Pat from Mullingar" or "Pat of Mullingar," which also fits -- but it's about the IRA and mentions the Black and Tans, so it must have been composed after World War I (probably well after), and also well after this piece. So I'm not sure which tune is meant. - RBW
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File: MA045

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