Last Saturday, you had a chance to meet Clancy of the Overflow here on Secondary Roads.  Today, I’d like to share another poem by Banjo Paterson.  This time it is not sung by Slim Dusty, it is read by Frankie J Holden.  It’s as Australian as you can get. Banjo tells the story of the tough horsemen of the Snowy Mountains. Footage is from the movie Man From Snowy River presented by Michael Edgley International & Cambridge Films.

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At one time, Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson was a very famous poet.  He was born in Australia and after school entered a law office, where he became a lawyer.  He also wrote poems and stories.  Eventually he gave up the law practice to be a journalist.  You are probably more familiar with his poem, Waltzing Matilda.  Nevertheless, Clancy of the Overflow is my favorite poem by Banjo Paterson.  Here are the words:

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec’, addressed as follows, ‘Clancy, of The Overflow.’

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
‘Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving ‘down the Cooper’ where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —
But I doubt he’d suit the office, Clancy, of ‘The Overflow.’

Clancy was a real person — Thomas Gerald Clancy.  As the song indicates he was a sheep shearer who left that to become a cowboy.  Later, he gave that up to be a gold prospector.  If you love the outdoors, perhaps you too can relate to Clancy.

I know about this poem because of Slim Dusty.  I shared a song of his last week.  Here is Slim’s rendition of Clancy of the Overflow.  Enjoy.

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