Traditional Ballad Verse in Australia

Folklore, Oct, 2000 by William N. Scott

Along with the composition and publication of this ballad poetry there came into being a whole generation of what Australians called "reciters," folk who entertained by memorising the enormously popular verse of the time and delivering it from stages or around the campfires that still studded the great plains--the camps of the drovers moving mobs of cattle, the gatherings of itinerant workers in the wool industry. "Reciting," an echo of the ancient bards of pre-literary days who recalled and dispensed the ever-popular verses enjoyed by men in isolated circumstances. Until the end of the 1930s at almost every country concert and "social evening," or at dances while the orchestra rested, it was usual for the local "reciter" to entertain his audience with selections from his repertoire. Mostly the poems of A. B. Paterson, A. L. Gordon or Henry Lawson, often including one or two of his own efforts at versifying some local occurrence, probably in lame enough stanzas but to tremendous applause!

For a folklorist interested in spoken entertainment in its many forms there exists a wonderful record of such popular pieces. In the 1920s and 1930s a journalist named A. V. Vennard, under the pen-name "Bill Bowyang," conducted a column in the widely read North Queensland Register, published in Townsville. He called it "Bill Bowyang's Column" and he was interested in the performance of spoken verse. Vennard invited his readers to send in copies of their favourite recitations and normally published such communications in his weekly column. He went further and selected numbers of the most popular "recitations" in a series of six small, cheap booklets called Bill Bowyang Reciters, and a survey of these, published over a number of years gives the interested folklorist an insight into just what kind of poetry was popular to reciters and their audiences early in the century. The result of this study is to show that while most of the verse included is of Australian origin, international poets, particularly Robert Service, were popular also. Many of the poems recorded by Vennard show evidence of the folk process at work, for the poems submitted by his readers had often been learned verbatim from another person, and faulty memories and oral transmission had left their mark. It is interesting to compare the Vennard versions with the original poems and see just where the changes have been made! In some cases there are complete distortions, in others one cannot help feeling that the original has been improved a little. The folklorist R. G. Edwards has in late years made a selection from the poems contained in Vennard's ephemeral booklets and published it as an occasional paper with the title The Lass Who Rode The Rover (Rams Skull Press, 1986).

With the '40s there came a change of direction in the form and content of Australian poetry which has continued with variations to the present time--literary and published poetry, that is. But it was about that time that "reciters" lost popularity as entertainers and for many post-WW2 years one never encountered them in public performance. Some poets, such as the late Edward Harrington, continued to pen significant verse, and some established poets made use of the form for particular poems where it was suitable, but on the whole the literary establishment's attitude mirrored that of their predecessors a century earlier, in that they ignored the phenomenon entirely or reacted patronisingly if they happened to encounter it. Fortunately for folklorists, the folk did not hear what was being said about what they regarded as poetry and continued to write it down when they were emotionally touched or had a good story to tell. Though it never, or hardly ever, achieved public performance, nevertheless it continued as a kind of underground poetic movement. Folk wanted to write poetry and continued to do so, unheard and unregarded.