The true bushman never hurries his songs. They are
designed expressly to pass the time on long journeys or
slow, wearisome rides after sheep or tired cattle; so the songs
are sung conscientiously through—chorus and all—and the
last three words of the song are always spoken, never sung.
There is, too, a strong Irish influence in the greater number
of the songs; quite a large proportion are sung to the
tune of the “Wearing of the Green,” and the admixture of
Irish wit and Irish pathos in their composition can only be
brought out by a good singer.

One excuse, if excuse be needed, for the publication of this
collection is the fact that the songs it contains are fast being
forgotten. Thirty or forty years ago every station and every
shearing shed had its singer, who knew some of the bush
songs. Nowadays they are never sung, and even in districts
where they took their rise they have pretty well died out.
Only a few years ago, every shearing shed had at least one
minstrel who could drone out the refrain of a shearing song—

“But, oh, boys, such sheep I never shore,
As those that made us knuckle down at Goorianawa”

But the Goorianawa sheep are not celebrated in song nowadays,
and advertisement has failed to produce a copy of the
song. Down in the rough country near the Upper Murrumbidgee,
where the bushranger Gilbert was betrayed by
a relative and was shot by the police, there was a song about
“Dunn, Gilbert, and Ben Hall” It commenced—