Stringybark

DESCRIPTION: "There are white-box and pine on the ridges afar, Where the ironbark, bluegum, and peppermint are, But the one I know best and the dearest to me And the king of them all is the stringybark tree." Why is it so dear? The singer's birth-hut was made of it
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1968
KEYWORDS: home
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Meredith/Anderson-FolkSongsOfAustralia, p. 264, "Stringybark" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Stringybark and Greenhide" (subject)
NOTES [214 words]: Learmonth, p. 511, describes stringybark as an informal name for several species of eucalyptus, the name being given because the bark "peels off in long fibrous strips." Morris, pp. 442-443, gives multiple meanings. The first, dating back to at least 1845, is close to Learmonth's: "any one of various Gums with a tough fibrous bark used for tying, for cordage, for roofs of huts, etc." The second sense is "bush slang for bad whisky." The third is simply an equivalent for "bush" in all its senses, i.e. that which is away from civilization.
Ramson, p. 643, "Any of many trees, chiefly of s.e. mainland Aust., of the genus Eucapyptus (fam. Myrtaceae) having a characteristically thick, rough, persistent, long-fibred bark; the barak of the tree. Also with distinguishing epithet, as red, swamp, white, yellow." The first citation is from 1799. But there is a secondary meaning: "Used allusively as an emblem of the unsophisticated, the remote, and the rustic."
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, p.281, notes that stringybark grew on poor land, but it isn't absolutely clear whether this means low soil fertility or unusually dry. I would guess the former, though, because eucalyptus leaves reportedly are very low in nutrition value even by leaf standards. - RBW
Bibliography

Learmonth: Andrew and Nancy Learmonth, Encyclopedia of Australia, 2nd edition, Warne & Co, 1973
Morris: Edward E. Morris, A Dictionary of Austral English, 1898 (I use the 1972 Sydney University Press with a new foreword but no new content)
Ramson: W. S. Ramson, editor, The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Autralianisms on Historical Principles, Oxford University Press (Melbourne), 1988

Last updated in version 5.2
File: MA264

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