Even in a little thing

Attempts to Post About Things this week have mostly failed. Instead, let me inform you all that I noticed that The Longest Johns had put out the last of their eight-part series "Pieces of Eight" (instead of an album, eight "singles" of three tracks each). I had actually missed pieces 5, 6 and 7, so I have many shanties and ballads to catch up on.

Currently I am particularly enjoying:



But there is also new-to-me Australiana! And I believe it also ought to be brought to the attention of monksandbones, who I know keeps a playlist of "Peril on the Sea".



The fun thing about this being recorded by the Longest Johns is that Longest Johns fans keep a "longest song" wiki with surprisingly good historical info and links out to other sites. Why have I never heard this "Traditional Australian folk song"? Well, the answer is it probably just wasn't that popular. "Folkstream" quote John Meredith, who in a later publication said he had collected the song in 1954 from Mary Byrnes, who at 73 recalled having sung it as a child (late 1880s or early 1900s).

The wreck in question was of a steamship travelling between Melbourne and Newcastle, which foundered off Jervis Bay in 1876.¹ The lyrics as recorded at Folkstream, from Meredith's version and from a contributor's father, have the look of "ballad made to go in newspapers".

I guess John Meredith didn't like the song that much - a founding member of The Bushwhackers, many of the lesser-known folk songs in their discography were drawn from his collecting work. And so the song, or at least the tune, passed out of all knowledge, until, when chance came, it ensnared a new musician...

The Longest Song says that Australian folk artist Kate Burke found it in the Australian Folk Music Archives in the NLA - they cite Mainly Norfolk, but only one of the sources quoted there says she was the one who found it. The quote from Burke and her collaborator Ruth Hazelton says they were given Meredith's 1954 recording of Mary Byrne singing by Chris Sullivan (mind you, when I look up the late Chris Sullivan talking about his PhD research, not only does it seem that his contribution was working with the _music_ of Australian folk song, not just the lyrics, but a substantial chunk of the tapes in his collection he found in the NLA).

One way or the other, Kate Burke transcribed Mary Byrnes' version, and added the refrain. Her basic arragement and refrain are now the standard for all subsequent recordings. That explains why the refrain feels... different. The tune continues but the style is different (although I also think I have encountered this mix of ballad with lullaby-esque refrain before, in other modernised folk songs).

But wait, there's more! I can use Trove too, friends, I can use Trove too. Mary Byrne also pops up in the newspaper record: in 1954 (the same year she spoke to John Meredith), she appears to have spoken with, and sung for, a Russel Ward, who recorded the lyrics of The Wreck of the Dandenong in an article for the Sydney Morning Herald (25 May 1954). Ward specifically notes that Byrne recalls this as a song she sang during harvest time, part of a class of songs which, Ward feels, are unknown in the city or even in coastal settlements.

I could only fish two results out of Trove: the earlier one provides not a song, but a poem. The Newcastle Sun, on 12 September 1931 commemorated the 56th (why?) anniversary of the sinking of the Dandenong on its childrens' page, complete with a poem which pretty closely resembles the version collected by Meredith - but more closely matches the fragmentary version which folkstream published, sent in by Margaret Lloyd-Jones according to the memory of her father Mick Frawley of Toowoomba (QLD). The Newcastle Sun in 1931 attributes the poem to James Brennan of Anvil Creek, near Greta (NSW), and report that it was sent to them by his daughter Mrs R L M Robinson, of Mereweather West (NSW).

I don't have access to a copy of John Meredith and Hugh Anderson's "Folk Songs of Australia and the Men and Women Who Sang Them" (various editions 1960-something-1980-something), but the google books snippet for volume 2 of the 1987 edition tells me that someone named Harry sang them a version to "quite different" tune, which was in fact so close to Auld Lang Syne that the said Harry slipped seamlessly from one to the other.

Now, it's quite possible that the daughter of James Brennan misremembered her father's authorship. I'm annoyed that I can't find any earlier printing of that poem than 1931 - a very plausible origin for a little-known folk song with two tunes, one relatively distinct and one very close to Auld Lang Syne would be if people had independently picked up a poem and set it to music - one resulting in the current tune, with drift in lyrics over time, and the other set originally to Auld Lang Syne, with slight drift in the tune over time through musician-to-musician teaching/adjusting. Mouvance, as I am obliged as a medievalist to say.

This has been: peril on the sea, and voyages into Trove.nla.gov.au.

Edit: of all the things that are Wrong on The Internet, I do not know why this one is the first thing to actually impel me to edit a wiki, but screw it, I have made a fandom.com wiki editing account and added the citations from Trove to the Longest Song. The WaybackMachine has a record of the version of the page that I used originally.

1. Observers of niche Australian facts may know that while most of the bay and its shore are within NSW, most of the southern headland - including Jervis Bay Village and Wreck Bay village - are an exclave consituting perhaps the least-notable Territory of Australia: the Jervis Bay Territory, exclaved from NSW in 1915 to provide a port for the future capital. It currently has a naval base, it is administered directly by the Federal Government (in addition, the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council exercises various governance functions over about 90% but not all of the Territory). The laws of the ACT apply there, and its residents vote in the Division of Fenner (same as ACT residents) for Federal elections, but it is not part of the ACT and its residents do not vote in ACT elections. All of this postdates the wreck of the Dandenong, I just wanted to share these largely useless facts.