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Just a minute to ponder and think: http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/anzac/lastpost.htm
"Brisbane Ladies" http://www.contemplator.com/canaus/brisbane.html
GI Blues
Didja' ever get one of them days, boy, didja ever get one of them days?
When nothin' is right from morning till night, didja ever get one of them days?
You get up in the morning, you turn the shower on.
You're gettin' pneumonia ... all the hot water is gone.
Freezing, sneezing, you want to dry your back ...
Didja ever get one of them days when there's no towel on the rack?
Didja ever get one of them girls, boy, didja ever get one of them girls?
Who's awful nice, but cold as ice, didja ever get one of them girls?
You're at a drive-in movie, you're with a cute brunette.
Your counting on the kisses that you figure to get.
Closer, closer, then she hollars "whoa".
Didja ever get one of them girls who just wants to watch the show?
You're on on Sunday picnic, the rain it starts to pour.
You run through poison ivy, scratching till you are sore.
Ants come dancing ... carry off the bread.
Didja ever get one of them days when you should have stayed in bed?
RIVER DEEP MOUNTAIN HIGH
When I was a little girl
I had a rag doll
Only doll I've ever owned
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll
But only now my love has grown
And it gets stronger, in every way
And it gets deeper, let me say
And it gets higher, day by day
And do I love you my oh my
Yeh river deep mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
When you were a young boy
Did you have a puppy
That always followed you around
Well I'm gonna be as faithful as that puppy
No I'll never let you down
Cause it grows stronger, like a river flows
And it gets bigger baby, and heaven knows
And it gets sweeter baby, as it grows
And do I love you my oh my
Yeh river deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
I love you baby like a flower loves the spring
And I love you baby just like Tina loves to sing
And I love you baby like a school boy loves his pet
And I love you baby, river deep mountain high
Oh yeah you've gotta believe me
River Deep, Mountain High
Do I love you my oh my, oh baby
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
The Scottish Arts Council (see [4.17]) has suggested having a new national anthem written for post-devolution Scotland. However, a number of existing songs or tunes could be used. Here's the most frequently suggested.
Existing Anthem. The current Official National Anthem in Scotland is God Save the Queen which is detested by many, not least because it was originally written as a pro-English, anti-Scottish song at the time of the Jacobite freedom fighters. Furthermore, many Scots are not particularly Royalist. The original version, had this verse (now dropped):
God grant that Marshall Wade,
May by thy mighty aid,
victory bring,
May he sedition hush,
and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush
God save the King.
Flower of Scotland is also used in an official capacity as the anthem for Scottish Rugby and Football and I believe it is also used at the Commonwealth Games.
Songs
Flower of Scotland (The Corries)
Dawning of The Day (The Corries)
http://www.corries.com/
Freedom Come All Ye (Hamish Henderson)
Hamish sees this song as more of an international, rather than
national song. Lyrics at
http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/songs/texts/freecaye.html
Highland Cathedral
A regular on the Edinburgh Tattoo and has been recorded by numerous artists. Lyrics: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/highlandcathedral/
Scots wha hae (Burns)
For a' that (Burns)
Auld Lang Syne (Burns) (there are two tunes)
Scotland the Brave (good tune, somewhat dated lyrics
Caledonia (Dougie MacLean)
http://www.dunkeld.co.uk/
Alba (Runrig)
http://www.runrig.co.uk/
The First Minister has also suggested we have a debate on the matter http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4837078.stm
Tunes only (new lyrics required)
Scotland the Brave
Farewell to Sicily
Wild Mountain Thyme
Callor Herring (sp?)
Annie Laurie
The Wild Geese
All the Fine Young Men
Willie McBride. See [9.3.9]
Bonnie Dundee
John McLean March
An Ubhal as aird
A Ribhinn Og, bheil cuimhne agad?
Fear a' Bhata
A Riubhinn Donn
Canan nan Gaidheal
Amazing Grace
Both Sides the Tweed (Dick Gaughan)
http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/songs/texts/tweed.html
'Hey, tuttie taitie.' (Scots wha hae) is a Scottish tune of such antiquity that there is belief in many quarters, (including Burns himself) that it was indeed the very battle tune used during the Wars of Independence.
Others and less serious contenders
If all leads to independence, "Ae fond kiss and then we sever" might be apropos...
Parcel O' Rogues (Burns)
Loch Lomond (traditional)
No gods and precious few heros (Brian McNeill / Hamish Henderson) http://www.b-mcneill.demon.co.uk/
I've often heard this melody played during docos of the American Civil War. Maybe someone knows the name?
Photos taken from various sources set to "Ashokan Farewell" showing the tragedy that was the American Civil War
a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx
The story of Ashokan Farewell.
Ashokan Farewell was named for Ashokan, a camp in the Catskill Mountains not far from Woodstock, New York. It's the place where Molly Mason and I have run the Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps for adults and families since 1980.
Ashokan is the name of a town, most of which is now under a very beautiful and magical body of water called the Ashokan Reservoir. I've heard it pronounced a-shó-kun, a-shó-kan, or sometimes ásh-o-kán. The reservoir provides drinking water for New York City one hundred miles to the south.
The late Alf Evers, our local historian, once told me that the name Ashokan first appeared as a place name in 17th century Dutch records. He thought it was probably a corruption of a local Lenape Indian word meaning, "a good place to fish." That it is!
I composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 shortly after our Fiddle & Dance Camps had come to an end for the season. I was feeling a great sense of loss and longing for the music, the dancing and the community of people that had developed at Ashokan that summer. The transition from living at a secluded woodland camp with a small group of people who needed little excuse to celebrate the joy of living, back to life as usual, with traffic, newscasts, telephones and impersonal relationships, had been difficult. By the time the tune took form, I was in tears. I kept it to myself for months, unable to fully understand the emotions that welled up whenever I played it. I had no idea that this simple tune could effect others in the same way.
Ashokan Farewell was written in the style of a Scottish lament. I sometimes introduce it as, "a Scottish lament written by a Jewish guy from the Bronx." I lived in the Bronx until the age of sixteen.
In 1983, our band, Fiddle Fever, was recording it's second album, Waltz of the Wind, and we needed another slow tune. We tried my yet unnamed lament. The arrangement came together in the studio very quickly with a beautiful guitar solo by Russ Barenberg, string parts by Evan Stover and upright bass by Molly Mason. Now it needed a name. Molly suggested the title, Ashokan Farewell. It seemed right to me.
Filmmaker Ken Burns heard the album in 1984 and was immediately taken by Ashokan Farewell. He soon asked to use it in his upcoming PBS series The Civil War. The original Fiddle Fever recording is heard at the opening of the film, and this and other versions are heard twenty five times for a surprising total of 59 minutes and 33 seconds of the eleven hour series. Molly and I, along with members of Fiddle Fever and pianist Jacqueline Schwab played much of the 19th century music heard throughout the soundtrack. Ashokan Farewell is the only contemporary tune that was used.
Jay Ungar
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1167093.htm
ANDREW DENTON: As a white man who was very sympathetic to blackfellas and the black man's situation, you were also in a position of some control and some power. Was that something you were uncomfortable with?
TED EGAN: Uh, no. I'm not uncomfortable with the control. And I worked for the department and... I have to acknowledge this was the Department of Native Affairs that was...the department that implemented the removal of mixed-race kids to go into institutions. Now, I was never required to do that but I could have been. Uh, and it's... It's an area of history that's...that does need to be discussed and debated and talked through and through and through. Because while I was one of the first to sign the Sorry Books, and I realise now that...our department was implementing a policy that was wrong, wrong, very wrong, because you can't discriminate on anyone on the basis of race, certainly not on children... But it did happen in those days. And so I was a person with the department and often in positions with great power.
And for example, I'd been made... I was, at age 27, I was appointed the superintendent of an Aboriginal reserve called Yuendumu. And there were about 1,000 Aboriginal people there - men, women, kids. And I had the key of the rations store and I was basically God because if I wasn't happy, I didn't open the store. And if the store didn't open, people didn't eat.
Now, I know that I never abused that power. But I did have the power. And...I just feel sorry that I didn't think things through a lot better for that period and a few others in my working life. Because...and silly me, I'd come from my experience round Darwin where I'd made...a good habit of not playing the "I'm an important government man". I was just one of the mob. And I should have done that more. I should have sat down at Yuendumu and learnt the local language.
We don't know Aboriginal languages. We've never tried from 1788. And it's the biggest shortcoming in Australia. And...only where local language has been understood has there ever been any success. And that's a lesson that's valid to this day. But here was I with the unique opportunity to do all these things I should have done, and I didn't.
I went in imbued with the work ethic. And, yes, the place that I ran was considered to be a resounding success. We organised a cattle station, we had market gardens, we had 100 per cent attendance at school, every baby was checked by the nursing sisters every day. But it was all based on the fact that I had the key of the store. There was the implied threat that if people don't cooperate with this crazy white man and all his work projects that he just mightn't open the key of the ration store.
ANDREW DENTON: So when you left...
TED EGAN: Mmm.
ANDREW DENTON: ..there was no drive within?
TED EGAN: When I left, the wheels fell off. The projects that I'd been so proud of...weren't continued. The only...thing that I instituted at Yuendumu that's still valid to this day - and it's very, very valid - is I taught the young blokes how to play Aussie Rules football. And they're still very, very good at football. And that's something that I'm going to pick up in my influential... I won't say this is a powerful job I've got now, the Administrator's job, but it is an influential job. And I'm going to pick up this football - football has stayed - and revisit a few of these places and a few of the people, via football, and say, "Can we try again in a few areas?"
Kev Carmody, John Butler and Paul Kelly perform From Little Things Big Things Grow at the Make Poverty History concert in Melbourne 2006
The eight year strike of Aboriginal stockmen and their families at Lord Vestey's enormous Wave Hill Station in Australia's Northern Territory began in 1966. Author Frank Hardy who wrote a book about the strike, "The Unlucky Australians", was told: "We want them Vestey mob all go away from here. Wave Hill Aboriginal people bin called Gurindji. We bin here long time before them Vestey mob. This is our country, all this bin Gurindji country. Wave Hill bin our country. We want this land; we strike for that."
Vincent Lingiari travelled all over Australia to address meetings and raise support for the strike. Support came quickly from trade unions, starting with the Waterside Workers in Darwin.
In 1972 a Labor Government was elected in Australia and it was Prime Minister Gough Whitlam who "through Vincent's fingers poured a handful of sand" as it says in the song, bringing the strike to an end and restoring ownership of the land to it's traditional owners. Gough Whitlam's words at the 1975 ceremony were "Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof, in Australian law, that these lands belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands part of the earth itself as a sign that this land will be the possession of you and your children forever."
Favourite verse (as posted on that youtube)
"And Vincent sat down with big politicians
This affair they told him is a matter of state
Let us sort it out, your people are hungry
Vincent said no thanks, we know how to wait"
From Little Things Big Things Grow
A Song By Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody ©1992
Gather round people and I'll tell you a story
An eight year long story of power and pride
British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiari
Were opposite men on opposite sides
Vestey was fat with money and muscle
Beef was his business, broad was his door
Vincent was lean and spoke very little
He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Gurindji were working for nothing but rations
Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land
Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter
Gurindju decided they must make a stand
They picked up their swags and started off walking
At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down
Now it don't sound like much but it sure got tongues talking
Back at the homestead and then in the town
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Vestey man said "I'll double your wages
Eighteen quid a week you'll have in your hand"
Vincent said "uhuh we're not talking about wages
We're sitting right here till we get our land"
Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered
"You don't stand the chance of a cinder in snow"
Vince said "If we fall others are rising"
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Then Vincent Lingiari boarded an aeroplane
Landed in Sydney, big city of lights
And daily he went round softly speaking his story
To all kinds of men from all walks of life
And Vincent sat down with big politicians
"This affair" they told him "Is a matter of state
Let us sort it out, your people are hungry"
Vincent said "No thanks, we know how to wait"
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
Then Vincent Lingiari returned in an aeroplane
Back to his country once more to sit down
And he told his people "Let the stars keep on turning
We have friends in the south, in the cities and towns"
Eight years went by, eight long years of waiting
Till one day a tall stranger appeared in the land
And he came with lawyers and he came with great ceremony
And through Vincent's fingers poured a handful of sand
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
That was the story of Vincent Lingiari
But this is the story of something much more
How power and privilege can not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
From little things big things grow
The National Anthem! It goes on and on and there's no singing, thank heavens: http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/8106/Anthems/australia.htm
Now it's on to "Waltzing Matilda" and best played in trumpet style at full blast ie "Shake the House Down" or "Blast everyone in the office volume": http://www.hamilton.net.au/matilda.html
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