The Australasian Students' Song Book

"The Australasian Students' Song Book": Published for the Song Book Board by George Robertson & Co. Pty., Ltd., Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane. Whitcombe & Tombs, and S. & W. Mackay. Price, 3/6.

When we sing in joyful and tuneless unison that Professor X's waistcoat is of a resplendent hue, or that page 28 Professor Z's boots present a large if unpolished surface, we are singing songs of the moment, and their fate is a merited oblivion. But much of the Capping Song Literature that appears annually is deserving of something better than to die with the passing of the year.

This fact has been recognised by the Editors of the Australasian Students' Song Book, and in selecting and bringing together the best songs of all the Universities throughout Australia and New Zealand they have produced a volume whose merits more than justify their enterprise.

Besides the University Songs, the collection contains the songs of Schools and Training Colleges, and, like the Scottish Students' Song Book, a number of the most popular general songs, from "Mary had a William Coat" and "Clementine," down to "Scots Wha ha'e."

New Zealand is well represented throughout: Victoria College by work from the pens of such notorious Capping Songsters as Professor Brown, and Messrs. S. S. Mackenzie and F. A. de la Mare.

What pleases us greatly about this book is that it brings vividly before our minds the fact that we students, at whatever University we may be, are all members of one vast and happy fraternity. The same joys delight us; the same trials oppress us; and the same jaded laugh greets the same professorial jest. Most of us have

"—made love to the cosine of Beta,
(An undergrad never is shy),
We've ne'er been afraid of a Theta,
We've battened full oft upon Pi"

as they apparently do in Sydney. When we read of

"A thumping fee, rascality,
A corkscrew wig for show,
A leather lung, a rattling tongue,
And a smack of Cicero:
Strain off the sense and make it dense
With logic too fine to see,
Encase when fried in an elephant's hide
And bow to your LL.B."

we have a dim and dark suspicion that this recipe is not peculiar to the Sydney Varsity Cookery Book. While

"These are the notes the Professor embodied
To use in his lectures, when once he'd studied
In an English translation, the explanation—
An awfully cute 'un—the learned Teuton
page 29 Evolved of the Dane who was not quite sane,
Who appears in the play that Bill wrote"

makes us feel that Canterbury College and we are old friends.

The School songs are a gathering passing fair, and, like all their tribe, contain an abundance of immaculate sentiment.

However, quotation and description can give no adequate idea of the excellence of the collection before us, and we confidently recommend all students, alike those who enjoy a good song at a merry gathering and those who look on the literary aspect alone, to purchase the book without delay.

For our part, we offer the members of the Song Book Board and their Chairman, Dr. F. A Todd, of Sydney University, congratulations on having filled a long-felt want in so successful a manner.