The Matilda Myth: Who'll Come a Waltzing?
Why are we so attached to 'Waltzing Matilda'? Across the past century, Australians have come to invest the song with ideas and meanings which may well be at odds with the events that gave rise to it.
Featuring the last recorded interview with legendary folk historian Richard Magoffin, plus a host of 'Matilda' aficionados, some of whom contest Magoffin's thesis about the song. And a rich smorgasbord of recordings of the song itself, from Harry Belafonte, through 80s Spandex, to a version recorded by an Indonesian gamelan band.
Visit the Matilda Myth special feature website here »
Michelle Rayner: You're with Hindsight on ABC Radio National. Michelle Rayner joining you this afternoon for the second part of the special 'Matilda Myth' series, where we dig deep into the origins and sentiments of that apotheosis of Australian folklore, the song 'Waltzing Matilda.'
If you caught our sister program Background Briefing this week you would have heard Part One, 'Silencing the swagman', where dogged journalist Ian Walker travelled to central Queensland and took on the 'cultural cold case' of the death by the billabong of the rebel shearer, Samuel 'Frenchy' Hoffmeister and the events which led Banjo Patterson to pen his famous song.
Ian uncovered a story laden with intrigue, industrial chaos and perhaps even murder. 'The Matilda Myth' takes as its starting point the work of the folk historian, the late Richard Magoffin, a man credited with uncovering many of the facts behind the genesis of 'Waltzing Matilda', including confirmation that the lyrics were indeed written by A. B. Paterson. And, just before Magoffin's death in 2006, Ian Walker recorded a final interview with him, exploring the historian's thesis, which is hotly contested by some Matilda aficionados, particularly over whether or not the song was written as a 'political allegory', reflecting the events of the bitter 1894 Shearers' Strike.
And while Background Briefing reopened the files on the events at the heart of the Matilda story, today on Hindsight we're taking a waltz along a slightly different tangent, against a sonic tableau comprising some of the 700 versions of the song, including Harry Belafonte and Indonesian gamelan, we're asking the simple question; why are Australians so attached to 'Waltzing Matilda'? What is it about the song which has seen us, over the past century or so, invest it with meanings and ideas which might actually be at odds with the song's origins?
So pull on your Blunnies, pop on the Akubra and sink a few cold ones while you hum along to Part Two of 'The Matilda Myth', 'Who'll come a waltzing?'.
[Music: different versions of 'Waltzing Matilda']
Robyn Holmes: It is a public song, it is our song, and in ways that no other song is.
Bill Kearns: Although it seems at times you think, well, it's rather a sad poem, but I can't think of any other tune that could take its place.
Peter Forrest: When Australians want to summon up their reserves of energy and achievement, 'Waltzing Matilda' comes to their aid.
Robyn Holmes: It's a great tune. You can sing it subtly, you can sing it boldly, you can sing it majestically, you can sing it any way you wish. And you've got something... you can tell it as a story, you know, 'the ghost may be heard,' or you can just sing it in a rousing chorus.
Bill Kearns: I reckon 'Waltzing Matilda', regardless of the history behind it, I think it's taken on a life of its own, and yes, probably most of the people that hear it don't even know the history behind it, but I don't think that matters.
Thérèse Radic: We need things that will draw us into the future, and this is an ongoing argument, and within it is encoded this desire to find out who we are.
Matthew Richardson: It's very unusual for people to argue so much about the origins and meaning of a song. Every single thing that you could argue about in connection with this song has been at some point. A while back the bigger argument was whether in fact Banjo Paterson fraudulently claimed to be the author of it when in fact it was an old folk song from somewhere else altogether, and elaborate theories were constructed to account for different ways in which the song might have reached Australia from Germany, reached Queensland from Victoria, reached Banjo Paterson's page from a folk tradition. Richard Magoffin's work primarily, and the work of some others as well, really settled that issue to the satisfaction of most people.
Richard Magoffin: Paterson was accused after he died of not writing 'Waltzing Matilda' because he would never say anything about it, and my job was to prove that he did write it. But the catalyst for me to decide to write a book about it came from Oscar Mendelsohn with his A Waltz with Matilda, in which he says that he was of the firm belief that Paterson did not write the words and the facts must now be faced, and a young bushman way up there set out to prove that he did.
Bill Magoffin: My father's work in 'Waltzing Matilda' really started because at that time he was still living in the district, not far from... well, 40 miles really from where most of these pivotal events took place. He'd been passed many aspects of the story firsthand from his father, who knew Bob Macpherson, who was the squatter in the story who knew Banjo, and there'd been a lot written about the song and the fact that Banjo possibly didn't even write the song, and of course that fired his interest, because of the fact that he lived in the district and had what he thought was the real story.
Richard Magoffin: The benefit I had was folklore, which wasn't acceptable of course by academics in the south, but at that time in 1964, '66, there were 18 or 20 elderly people in their 80s and 90s who were young when it began, and I was able to talk to them. And that was tremendously valuable because a few years later would have been too late.
Robyn Holmes: People forget very often that the Magoffin family was connected to the Macpherson family through the land holdings in Queensland, and Richard had grown up on the property. It's almost like you can hear the land, you can feel it, you can smell it in the way he describes it. But you understand that his interpretation of the evidence was based on an understanding of the fundaments of the land. I'll give you a little example: just how long it takes to get from Winton to Dagworth Station on a horse, he knows that, he knew it first hand.
Richard Magoffin: It's been said that the world's best national anthems, like the 'Marseillaise' and the 'Star Spangled Banner', have come from a turning point in history and often from the white heat of battle. So it is with 'Waltzing Matilda', it comes from the Shearers' Strikes which changed history in Australia. It was the beginnings of modern democracy. I think it is instinctively Australian, and the version that I sing I would have heard from my father, who was musical, and he used to play his saxophone at the dances in Kynuna when Bob Macpherson, who was a good pianist, played his sister's song as a Gypsy Tap.
Matthew Richardson: In 1894, shortly before Banjo turned up in that part of Queensland, on Dagworth Station there was a shootout between unionists and the squatter and his men and the policemen. The point of the shootout was to take an opportunity to burn down Dagworth woolshed, where they were planning to start shearing with scab labour the following day. Then the seven union men who took off in the night and made camp near the town of Kynuna, the next morning one of them was behaving strangely and that one was a man who always behaved strangely, named Frenchy Hoffmeister. He ostentatiously burned a letter and said, 'Well, that's that sorted out,' and then snuck off all on his own to a part of the side of the billabong they were camped out where no-one else could see him. The other campers report that they heard a gunshot at that point and found that he'd shot himself dead on the banks of the billabong. There are theories around that it may not have been as simple as that, that suicide might have been a way of keeping people out of trouble who actually had some part in it.
Later on in the morning Bob Macpherson, the manager of Dagworth and, according to the Magoffin analysis, the squatter in the song, turned up at Kynuna police station, rode back down the Diamantina River with the three policemen, who were now gathered together, to the billabong where the unionists were camped. And for the first time in the history of that part of western Queensland, three policemen rode up to a billabong at once, together with a squatter who was mounted on his thoroughbred, and there they found a swagman said to have killed himself. This all happened in late 1894, shortly before Banjo came to the very same station. It makes it seem fairly certain that those events had a part in the way he constructed the narrative of the song.
Richard Magoffin: Banjo Paterson was the classic example of the balladist. We're not poets, it's a different craft, it's very ancient. We are the people who... the current events reporting before people could read and write, and he is a master of the craft. He was taught by his grandmother and he uses a lot of assonance, repetition of the same vowel sound, and alliteration, repetition of consonants. And then there are some letters which are quicker than others, slow ones like 'l' and 'n' and fast ones like 's' and 't', and those come into use in things like 'The Man from Snowy River', where the pace gathers as he's coming down the hill.
Actor reads from Paterson's 'The Man from Snowy River':
He sent the flint stones flying but the pony kept his feet
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride
And the Man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride
Through the stringybarks and saplings on the rough and broken ground
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound
At the bottom of that terrible descent.
Richard Magoffin: Very clever. And he has been a master of the craft.
Robyn Holmes: The second thing that I came to understand about Richard was that he is a balladist himself. In a way, he was the last of that generation or those generations that grew up writing bush ballads and reciting bush ballads. He studied the ballad, he formally studied the ballad. He did a correspondence course in Britain to do it when he was living far out bush, and it's given him a different perspective, I think, on Paterson and Paterson's poetry and that whole tradition of poetry. And, again, this is something that perhaps we've lost in our understanding of that poetry.
Richard Magoffin: 'Waltzing Matilda' is an allegory like all of our nursery rhymes, that records history, and they were done in that way for particularly good reasons, usually for safety. The first level of meaning is that silly story. Then it is a record of historical events which occur. There was a swagman, his name was Frenchy Hoffmeister. The squatter was Bob Macpherson and the three policemen were Daley, Dyer and Cafferty. So we name them. And it is a record of those events, just like the old nursery rhymes were. And of course the waterhole, the billabong... it's all historical.
And then the third level of meaning is the real allegory, where we identify the characters in a different way. And the star of the story is the jumbuck, and it is through the jumbuck we can prove the allegory because I don't know anybody else who's ever used the word, certainly in writing, and Patterson used it in the second verse that he ever published, 'The Bushfire', and it was about Irish Home Rule, an allegory.
Matthew Richardson: In the 1880s Banjo wrote a poem called The Bushfire - an Allegory, and I suppose you could call it a political satire. It's a commentary on the way the British government was handling agitation in Ireland for a more autonomous system of rule there. He likened the British Empire to an Australian sheep station.
Actor reads from Paterson's 'The Bushfire - an Allegory'
There's Welshman's Gully, Scotchman's Hill,
And Paddymelon Flat:
And all these places are renowned
For making jumbucks fat.
The run is England's Empire great,
The fire is the distress
That burns the stock they represent;
Prosperity you'll guess.
And the blue gum bough is the Home Rule Bill
That's making such a mess
Matthew Richardson: There were outer paddocks, one of which was Paddymelon Flat, which stood for Ireland. The squatter was Billy Gladstone, obviously Prime Minister Gladstone. And there were a lot of problems with bushfires repeatedly starting in some of these outer paddocks like Paddymelon Flat, and Billy was pretty sure that they were being deliberately lit.
All men can see the fire, of course,
Spreads on at such a bat,
But who are setting it alight,
I cannot tell you that.
Matthew Richardson: At the end of the poem, Banjo actually explains the symbolism in the allegory and puts it very bluntly in front of you. 'Jumbucks' stood for the wealth of the land, and it's naturally easy to surmise that when 'Waltzing Matilda' talks about a jumbuck it's the contested wealth of that part of the country, which one side is trying to deny to another, if you take it to a logical political conclusion.
Richard Magoffin: So therefore like a mathematical equation, the jumbuck in Waltzing Matilda is bankers' and squatters' property in Australia. The 'swagman' is the citizen, the policemen represent excessive authority against the rights of the individual, they were overkill as the government came out with massive forces against the individuals. And then it's very strong in the last verse written by Paterson, there's no ghost. The word... and I sing it: 'And his voice can be heard as it sings in the billabongs, who'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.'
[Music: 'Waltzing Matilda']
That voice was the call of the Australian people for a fair society, that's what was drowned in the 1890s.
Matthew Richardson: The situation, the billabong and the Coolabah tree, naturally easy to understand as Australia in general, and there's a class struggle in there that you can easily find if you're looking for it. The 'billy', according to Richard Magoffin, and he may well be right, is the same billy that Henry Lawson referred to in a poem several years earlier, a very inflammatory poem that Lawson wrote on behalf of the strikers in which the billy and keeping the billy boiling was a metaphor for the crusade or the campaign of the labour movement. Lawson said something in that poem like 'It's going to be time to light another fire and boil another billy', so it's plausibly suggested, and Richard Magoffin is the one who deserves the credit for this analysis, that it's exactly that other billy that Banjo's swagman had got going to make a cup of tea that afternoon.
Richard Magoffin: Well, the reason he wrote 'Waltzing Matilda' is quite simple. It's a reply to Henry Lawson's 'Freedom on the Wallaby' from 1891. These people were confederates. They were very competitive, but Paterson was aware of the trouble that Lawson got into with 'Freedom on the Wallaby' but he did reply and he did it in a succinct way through the allegory. So that's the reason he wrote it, and of course it also was a freedom song. It was important, and that's why it spread, it went like wildfire. And it reversed the tradition when normally a folk song is finally written down, but this one was written and then became a folk song, and a lot of people didn't know who'd written it.
Matthew Richardson: In contrast to most other songs that are popular for a while or come and go in their popularity, 'Waltzing Matilda' is remarkably consistent, and more or less from day one it has been popular with everybody who's heard it. As soon as the option of recording it came along, it was instantly popular as a recording, it's been popular for a multitude of different arrangements and instruments. There's at least 700 known recordings of that song, probably more than that, I don't keep track of it, but it keeps going up. And it could fade out, but at the moment the popularity of it seems to continue in a way which is unusual compared to most pieces of music.
Robyn Holmes: It's singable. You can go to the rugby and 100,000 people can sing this song, so it's singable. There is a whimsy around it, there's a slight mystery around it. But it rolls off the tongue [sings], there's a beautiful match of rhythm and words.
Thérèse Radic: I think until modern times, what it would have said was that we were looking for a song that would express the national feeling about the place where we live. The attitude at the time would have been that our ideals lay with the working man in the countryside. It speaks to the Australian desire to be identified with the simple ideas of living in the outback, working hard, achieving what you can. The identification with pioneers and simple values, hard circumstances where endurance and virtue somehow won the day, I think it would have said that we're different from other people, and the difference is in what is often referred to as a laidback style, but really meant a certain kind of reticence, that we sort of folded our arms and looked at people elsewhere and said, 'Well, what are you? I know what I am' and 'I am' really meant 'I am an honest man'.
Peter Forrest: I think that the immense popularity and the understanding of the song as being something distinctly Australian—everywhere in the world it's understood that way, but that's a comparatively recent thing. I think that it wasn't until Peter Dawson did his wonderful rendition of the song in 1936 that it really took off all around the world, and we need to remember that Peter Dawson was the greatest recording star in Australian history and he really popularised it in this wonderfully dramatic rendition.
[Music: Peter Dawson's 'Waltzing Matilda']
Wartime radio archival: 'This week's mail brings a special request for Mrs Willis of East Hills for 'Waltzing Matilda', the song that has gone into action with the diggers in this war, from Timor to Tobruk.'
Peter Forrest: It really took hold during World War 2. It became a marching song, it became a song of hope, it became a song of Australia at a time when we needed something that we could grab hold of and think, 'well, this is who were are and what we are and we are going to get through this.' Ever since then I think that when Australians want to summon up their reserves of energy and achievement that 'Waltzing Matilda' comes to their aid.
Thérèse Radic: It's been so frequently used as a piece of nostalgia for Australians abroad or Australians about to leave the country in time of war that it has achieved a status that allows people to hear it and weep. I always find that astonishing but it can do it to me too, it just depends on the circumstances. If you're feeling isolated in some way or you're under stress in another place, as soldiers have been, then this tune which reminds you of home will have the effect of bringing that nostalgia to the fore.
Matthew Richardson: The term 'dream' or 'dreamy' has been used about that song by a number of people. One of the things that really led me to see it in that light was when I heard the earliest version of it reconstructed and sung in the 1895 melody, it moves slower, it has more of a faraway feel and something of an escapist quality, as well as an implausible tone to it which of course hasn't gone with the new melody. That's one aspect of the dream quality that it has. Another is just the possibility of putting different interpretations on it and being carried away and transported by it a little bit, depending which way your own thinking tends.
Bill Magoffin: The 'Waltzing Matilda' turf war, it's certainly ongoing, and in fact my father before he died he warned me that the turf war would probably never end. And I think what's behind it is because 'Waltzing Matilda' is such a valuable piece of cultural real estate, people kind of want to camp on it and take something away from it.
Matthew Richardson: My direct encounter with Richard Magoffin came very late in his life and he died while I was writing my book, but I though it was essential to talk to him because he was properly recognised as the leading authority on the facts surrounding the song, and he made it a lifelong project to get to the bottom of 'Waltzing Matilda''s origins, and having done that, he carried on a crusade almost against people who were trying to turn attention away from the political circumstances that the song was born in. And that manifests itself even now in a dispute between the line being pushed by the Waltzing Matilda Centre, or at least the backers of the Waltzing Matilda Centre, in Winton in outback Queensland, and Magoffin's followers who temporarily made their headquarters in the next town along. Now the same debate is being carried forward by Richard Magoffin's son Bill and by Peter and Sheila Forrest, who've been commissioned to write a book by the Waltzing Matilda Centre.
Peter Forrest: Richard Magoffin was a man who did outstanding work in earlier years to examine the origins of 'Waltzing Matilda' and to put out on the public record a lot of information and to correct a lot of misconceptions that had grown up over the years.
Matthew Richardson: There's a determination in some circles, and it mainly manifested itself in Winton, to hide away the political origins of the song. I think it's primarily because the more that we stress the political origins the more there's a risk in their eyes of the song being a political anthem here and now, and I've spoken to people in Winton and elsewhere who are sometimes irritated by the way there's a clique in the Winton area that tries to control the way 'Waltzing Matilda' is presented to the world outside.
Excerpt from Waltzing Matilda Centre Audio Visual: 'Stop a mo and I'll tell you a little story about a man (me) and a country, and how in a funny kind of a way something I didn't live to regret caught the hearts of a lot of people over a lot of years, and how those people made a song of it, took that song and made it their own. And how it came to mean a whole country really. Why? If you ask me I reckon it's a song that's a song to the soul of our country.'
Peter Forrest: It emerged from the mosaic of events that was in Paterson's mind. And when Paterson was at Dagworth and he was sitting down to dinner and the overseer, Carter, came in and was asked what he saw today, and he said that he just saw a swagman waltzing Matilda down by the billabong, Paterson jumped up and said, 'I could write something about that.' And I think he could have been showing off, he could have been wanting to impress Christina Macpherson, he dashed off a few words, it was just a piece of whimsy. I don't think that it was a deeply veiled allegory at all.
Bill Magoffin: Like, at the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton they won't show that, and if they did they'd have to change nearly everything. Peter Forrest who has done the history for Winton won't show it, and that allows them to carry on with the folklore, with the fiction.
Peter Forrest: The difficulty was that Richard came to believe that he owned 'Waltzing Matilda' and he got to be rather resentful of people who took a view that was different from his own. And I'd be astonished, really, to think that were Patterson to come back, he would be astonished to think that people were attributing to him sympathy for a group of lawless shearers who refused to work, who had been involved in firing shots at his hosts and besieging them in the Dagworth woolshed, setting fire to that woolshed, things that Paterson would have had absolutely no sympathy for at all.
Thérèse Radic: The men who wrote were all against one another, none of them shared the opinion of any other, it was a masculine argument, it went on for many years, no-one could agree with anybody else. Each one of them seemed to want to better the other. It was like boys in the schoolyard trying to assert their superiority each time.
Bill Magoffin: He used to get quite irate, I suppose, when people would throw out furphies or proven untruths, and he'd get very agitated about that.
Peter Forrest: He was like that, he was very prone to use extreme language that really he didn't back up.
Bill Magoffin: I don't get anywhere near as agitated but I do feel if someone wants to have a theory about 'Waltzing Matilda' then they should at least look at the work my father did and either agree with it or have a reasonable argument to counteract that.
Matthew Richardson: A few years ago there was a bit of a controversy in connection with the Rugby Union World Cup.
Excerpt from ABC Radio's AM: 'The people who run international rugby want to 'sin bin' Australia's famous ballad 'Waltzing Matilda' from the world cup later this year. According to the International Rugby Union, the song isn't important to Australian culture and it doesn't want it sung before matches.'
Matthew Richardson: The International Rugby Board, based in Ireland, issued a directive that the only performances other than national anthems had to be things with cultural significance for the peoples concerned. So they would put up with a haka on the grounds of its cultural significance, but that songs like 'Waltzing Matilda' weren't to be included, and of course this didn't go down well at all with the Australian fans, nor with large other elements of the Australian community like the media and politicians. And ultimately the rugby board relented and put on a couple of conditions under which a subversive song like 'Waltzing Matilda' could be sung, but still allowed it to be sung by the fans and it went ahead and was sung at most of the relevant matches.
Reading of Excerpt from Newspaper:
...Sydney Morning Herald , December 12th, 2005.
A crowd of at least 5,000, overwhelmingly under 25, took over Cronulla's foreshore and beachside streets. Police were powerless as 200-odd ringleaders, many clutching bottles or cans of beer and smoking marijuana, led assaults on Lebanese Australians who risked an appearance during the six-hour protest. Sometimes when a victim was cornered, the mob started singing 'Waltzing Matilda'.
Matthew Richardson: That phenomenon of the Cronulla rioters singing it I suppose was because it was taken as a token of a national position or a cultural position like the flag-waving they did and so forth, and of course a song like 'Waltzing Matilda' is always going to be adopted by one group or another with an attempt to make its own as a form of endorsement for what they're doing. Of course it doesn't prevent everybody else from doing exactly the same thing and you will sometimes get occasions where opponents of one another are cheerfully singing along to the same song. It has that property of signifying what you want it to signify, and what it signifies if it was sung at a union meeting is probably different to what it signifies when it's played by the naval band.
Thérèse Radic: 'Waltzing Matilda' to me stands for a long argument about who and what we were and what we are. It's a song that almost became our national anthem, remained our national song. I think it's wonderful that we've got it, I just wish that we had 20 others as well.
Richard Magoffin: I believe it's important we know what happened because it was a turning point in our history. How do I feel after all these years? I sure am handing over now to my sons, who know the story. I know that it will never stop.
Bill Magoffin: It's a rebel song: 'You'll never take me alive, said he.' It's the Australian fighting spirit, and that's what fires people up, and that's the way I feel when I hear it. Naturally I think people have an interest just to know what it is behind the song and how it came about, and I think the enduring popularity of the song will ensure that people in perpetuity will be interested to know what's behind it. And the interesting thing about 'Waltzing Matilda' is there is a real story behind it, and what's even more interesting is that that story isn't immediately apparent.
Richard Magoffin: It says Australia, and so many people over the years have said, 'Well, we could have it as a national anthem if we got rid of the silly words.' It fits in with the fact that we call a tall man Shortie, a red-headed bloke is called Bluey, you can have a real good mate and call him a mongrel bastard. ANZAC Day commemorates a terrible military disaster, and we sing a happy song about a suicide. It's us!
Michelle Rayner: You've been listening to 'Who'll Come a Waltzing?', Part Two of 'The Matilda Myth' here on Hindsight. It was produced by broadcaster and documentary-maker Ian Walker, and the sound engineer was Timothy Nicastri.
Thanks to contributors Robyn Holmes from the National Library of Australia, bush poet Bill Kearns, historian Peter Forrest, Melbourne musicologist Thérèse Radic, writer Matthew Richardson, and from the last recorded interview before his death in 2006, the folk historian Richard Magoffin, and his son Bill Magoffin. Chris Burke read Banjo Patterson's verse, and our thanks to the National Library and to the National Film and Sound Archive who hold the 700 known recordings of 'Waltzing Matilda'. Apparently they've stopped counting.
- Michelle Rayner
- Ian Walker
- Sound Engineer
- Timothy Nicastri