Songs for unemployed miners

Shanties by the Way edited by Rona Bailey and Herbert Roth (Whitcombe and Tombs, $3.35). Reviewed by Niel Wright.

We have grown accustomed to anthologies of New Zealand verse that begin in 1930 or 1945. It is a pleasure. by way of contrast, to find one which begins in 1810. and has a span of 150 years.

Such an anthology allows one to review New Zealand culture in its entirety—the first impression is that our people's experience has ben troubled and painful. These are not the songs of a restful Utopia, but of a disturbed and troubled frontier.

The verse is of differing quality. Work by known literary writers appears in two sections.

Towards the end, there are offerings by Mason. Glover, Fairburn, and Baxter, which are generically at home in the book though lacking the urgency and realism found elsewhere.

William Satchell, David McKee Wright, A. B. Patterson, and probably Will Lawson, writing about 1900, more vitally capture the spirit of depressed conditions.

Outside this literary work, the best in the volume is the genuine oral ballads, David Lowston, recalling an event that occurred in 1809, the text of which was recorded in USA, and The Gay Muttonbirder.

Unfortunately, there are few of these oral ballads. Most of the songs are the work of pedestrian versifiers and exist in authorial texts. They are too inferior and impressed with the authors' characters to be worth much.

Charles R. Thatcher was a professional entertainer among the miners. His work reflects his standing, being at once popular and trivial.

Arthur Desmond, a Labour agitator, who had a colourful and perhaps heroic existence, writes with more talent and much more passion than most.

A number of pieces are topical relating to elections and such like. The stuff of history still clings to these.

The Young Teetotaller, a prohibition ballad, is quite ludicrous, particularly in view of the recent referendum—

I am a young teetotaller
and though but six years old,
Within my little breast there beats
A heart as true as gold.
My father and my mother
Are temperance people too,
My sister and my brother
All to their pledge keep true.
But none of these have much of the stuff of poetry.

Tramping contributes an interesting piece in Double-bunking. The Sweater is a powerful piece arising from hard times. The Hay of the Disappointed, A Tract for the Hard Times, and The Unlucky Digger, in various ways are successful social comments.

The volume seems to suggest New Zealanders have largely failed to reproduce the social reality of their history in verse—have frequently trivialised it and always misrepresented it. Perhaps there is a lesson here.

— Niel Wright