Part 21

* "The immediate success of this book of bush ballads is without parallel in Colonial literary annals, nor can any living English or American poet boast so wide a public, always excepting Mr. Rudyard Kipling."

* "These lines have the true lyrical cry in them. Eloquent and ardent verses."

* "Swinging, rattling ballads of ready humour, ready pathos, and crowding adventure. . . . Stirring and entertaining ballads about great rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs of the horses."

* "At his best he compares not unfavourably with the author of 'Barrack-Room Ballads'."

* Mr. A. Patchett Martin (London): "In my opinion, it is the absolutely un-English, thoroughly Australian style and character of these new bush bards which has given them such immediate popularity, such wide vogue, among all classes of the rising native generation."

* "Australia has produced in Mr. A. B. Paterson a national poet whose bush ballads are as distinctively characteristic of the country as Burns's poetry is characteristic of Scotland."

* "A book like this . . . is worth a dozen of the aspiring, idealistic sort, since it has a deal of rough laughter and a dash of real tears in its composition."

* "These ballads . . . are full of such go that the mere reading of them make the blood tingle. . . . But there are other things in Mr. Paterson's book besides mere racing and chasing, and each piece bears the mark of special local knowledge, feeling, and colour. The poet has also a note of pathos, which is always wholesome."

* "He gallops along with a by no means doubtful music, shouting his vigorous songs as he rides in pursuit of wild bush horses, constraining us to listen and applaud by dint of his manly tones and capital subjects . . . We turn to Mr. Paterson's roaring muse with instantaneous gratitude."

RIO GRANDE'S LAST RACE, AND OTHER VERSES.

By A. B. Paterson.

* "There is no mistaking the vigour of Mr. Paterson's verse; there is no difficulty in feeling the strong human interest which moves in it."

* "Every way worthy of the man who ranks with the first of Australian poets."

* "At once naturalistic and imaginative, and racy without being slangy, the poems have always a strong human interest of every-day life to keep them going. They make a book which should give an equal pleasure to simple and to fastidious readers."

* "Now and again a deeper theme, like an echo from the older, more experienced land, leads him to more serious singing, and proves that real poetry is, after all, universal. It is a hearty book."

* "Mr. Paterson has powerful and varied sympathies, coupled with a genuine lyrical impulse, and some skill, which makes his attempts always attractive and usually successful."

* "These are all entertaining, their rough and ready wit and virility of expression making them highly acceptable, while the dash of satire gives point to the humour."

* "He catches the bush in its most joyous moments, and writes of it with the simple charm of an unaffected lover."

* "Will be welcome to that too select class at home who follow the Australian endeavour to utter a fresh and genuine poetic voice."

* "Mr. Paterson now proves beyond question that Australia has produced at least one singer who can voice in truest poetry the aspirations and experiences peculiar to the Commonwealth, and who is to be ranked with the foremost living poets of the motherland."

* "Fine, swinging, stirring stuff, that sings as it goes along. The subjects are capital, and some of the refrains haunt one. There is always room for a book of unpretentious, vigorous verse of this sort."

* "These ballads make bright and easy reading; one takes up the book, and, delighted at the rhythm, turns page after page, finding entertainment upon each."

Biographical Note:

Andrew Barton Paterson was born at Narambla, in New South Wales, on 17 February 1864, but grew up at Buckenbah and Illalong. He became a lawyer but devoted much of his time to writing, and gained popularity especially for his poetry and ballads. His best known poems are The Man from Snowy River (1892) on which a motion picture was loosely based, and Waltzing Matilda (1895) which slowly became an Australian symbol and national song. The poems he wrote for a Sydney newspaper led him into reporting, and he went to South Africa to cover the Boer War. Always a fair man, he had his doubts about the war and was a little too vocal about it for the tastes of some of his readers. During the First World War he served in Egypt as a Major in a Remount Unit, training horses for the war. This fit one of his main interests in life -- horses --a preoccupation which is very evident in his poems, and even in his choice of pseudonym --"The Banjo" was a race-horse.

The works for which Paterson is famous were mostly written before the First World War, and are collected in three books of poems, The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses (1895), Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses (1902), and Saltbush Bill, J.P. and Other Verses (1917). His prose works include An Outback Marriage (1906), and Three Elephant Power and Other Stories (1917), the latter of which is a collection of tall tales and serious (but often humourous) reporting. In fact, above all else it is perhaps Paterson's sense of humour that sets him apart from such balladists as Rudyard Kipling and Robert Service. It should also be noted that Paterson was writing his ballads before either of these became well-known, and there was little, if any, influence from either side. More likely, Paterson was influenced by the Scottish tradition of poetry (Paterson was of Scottish descent) which had been popularized in Australia by Adam Lindsay Gordon and others. Banjo Paterson died of a heart attack on 5 February, 1941.

A. Light, 1995.