Stringybark Cockatoo, The

DESCRIPTION: "I'm a broke alluvial miiner who's been using his cup to drain." With no other means of support, the miner goes to work for a "stringybark cockatoo." The work is dull and the master poor, cheap, and hard to work with
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Paterson's _Old Bush Songs_)
KEYWORDS: unemployment work farming Australia mining
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, pp. 107-108, "The Stringybark Cockatoo" (1 text, 1 tune)
Manifold-PenguinAustralianSongbook, pp. 100-102, "The Stringybark Cockatoo" (1 text, 1 tune)
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, pp. 281-283, "The Stringybark Cockatoo" (1 text)
Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads, pp. 34-35, "The Stringybark Cockatoo" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: A. K. MacDougall, _An Anthology of Classic Australian Lore_ (earlier published as _The Big Treasury of Australian Foiklore_), The Five Mile Press, 1990, 2002, p. 179-180, "The Stringybark Cockatoo" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Cockies of Bungaree" (plot, lyrics)
NOTES [72 words]: A "Cockatoo," or "Cockie," is a farmer whose land is so poor that it can raise little but cockatoos. Stringybark (for which see "Stringybark") was also considered a sign of very poor land.
This song has so many similarities to "The Cockies of Bungaree" that I have to suspect literary dependence. The "Bungaree" text is the more popular, and hence perhaps more likely to be original, but I can offer no absolute proof of this. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.2
File: PASB100

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