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Australia's national song gets a lot of attention, and this is the best place on the Web to look for information about it. The hit-rate on this site is running at about 200,000 p.a., and the song's frequent use at sporting events (tennis, the Olympics, the Rugby Union World Cup, etc.) keeps driving more people here.

STOP PRESS: Waltzing Matilda Day is held annually in Winton. In 2013, it's on Saturday 6 April.
A Dinner is held at the North Gregory Hotel, where the song was first publicly performed in 1895.
Contact Col Kenna, North Gregory Hotel, 0438 288 896, cgkenna@bigpond.net.au

The Australian Broadcasting Commission aired a two-part special called 'The Matilda Myth', on Sunday 14 February 2010 at 09:00 and 14:00 AEDT (UT+11). Details here (PDF). It should be available, live, over the Internet.

A Tribute to Richard (Dick) Magoffin

We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Richard Magoffin (1937-2006), who was the source of a great deal of the valuable cultural history wapped up in the song. He passed away on 4 May 2006. His son Bill informs me that his research material and many items from his display are now in the National Library in Canberra.

This page contains a lot of information and a lot of links to more pages on this site, and to pages provided by many other people and organisations. Acknowledgements and administrative notes are at the end of the document. The things that most visitors seem to be looking for are:

• the words of the song, as most people know it:
  • the words, as they are sung these days
  • an explanation of what the words mean
• some historical information about it:
  • the story of how Waltzing Matilda came to be written, including photos of the poet who wrote the words. See also information provided on another site about the place it was written, Dagworth Station, and some ruminations about Who Was The Swagman?
  • here's some information about the poet, Banjo Paterson
  • here's (a reproduction of) the original manuscript. Note that these are not the words commonly sung today. I've also provided a transcription, and a couple of comments about the text
  • here's (a reproduction of) the original score

This was the first source of information about the song made to be made available on the Web, in February 1995. Others have been created since, but I'm sticking with my claim that it's 'the original and the best'. The Australian National Library launched an excellent, if somewhat official-looking site in 2003.

This site has the following departments:

• the words and the history (the first section, above)
• the three versions of 'Waltzing Matilda'. These are:
  • the original 'Christina Macpherson' or 'Queensland version'
  • the later, very popular, 'Victorian' or 'Marie Cowan' Version
  • the very rare 'Cloncurry' or 'Buderim' Version
• performances that I'm aware of, including:
  • Australian performers
  • non-Australian performers
• some miscellania about the song and its history
• the ridicuous situation in relation to copyright in the song
• Australia's national anthem (no, it's not 'Waltzing Matilda', or at least it isn't yet)
• Eric Bogle's song 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda''
• Tom Waite's song 'Tom Traubert's Blues'
• the debate about 'The Bold (or Gay) Fusilier' aka 'The Rochester Recruiting Sergeant'
• some parodies of 'Waltzing Matilda'
• other people's sites; and
• finally, here's a riddle: What was the name of the swagman?
• and here's a section listing my acknowledgements to the people who discovered all this knowledge. (I did no original research; I just searched for and organised information that had been gathered by others)

Versions

The song as it's sung today is not the same as it is was originally written. The story is complicated, and has been difficult to sort out. If there's anything in here you can improve on, please tell me about it.

(1) The original 'Christina Macpherson' or 'Queensland version'

The words were written by Banjo Paterson, and the score by Christina Macpherson, at Dagworth Station near Winton, in January 1895. It is thought to have been first performed publicly at the North Gregory Hotel in Winton, on 6 April 1895, apparently at a banquet for the Premier of Queensland.

I have yet to discover when this version was first published. Richard Magoffin was reported by ABC News on 22 August 2003 as saying that "It was first published on leaflets, just the words only, in 1902 in The Hughenden Advertiser. But it was first published as a song in Sydney by James Inglis and Company of Billy Tea - they published it to advertise their tea". (The words in The Hughenden Advertiser in 1902 would have been Banjo's originals. But the song published by James Inglis & Co. in 1903 was set to a different tune, with adapted words, and with a significantly changed chorus. That's the 'Marie Cowan' version, as explained below).

Here's (a reproduction of) the original score; and here's (a reproduction of) the original manuscript. And here's a transcription, and a couple of comments about the text.

Christina is said to have believed she was playing a tune she'd heard a few months earlier. A letter she wrote in 1931 provides some information about the event. She couldn't remember the name of the tune, but played it from memory. Paterson liked its 'whimsicality and dreaminess', and decided to write some words for it. (So a plausible interpretation is that Banjo was being polite to his girlfriend's mate, and passed the time by running off a bit of doggerel to fit the metre of the tune).

The tune that Christina is supposed to have been remembering was a march arrangement of a Scottish ballad 'Thou Bonnie Wood o' Criagielea' of about 1818. It had been played at the Warrnambool Annual Steeplechase Meeting in April 1894, which Christina had attended. (Warrnambool is in western Victoria, about 1,700 km to the south!).

On the one hand, Christina has been suggested to have had a good ear, and to have been able to play a rendition of 'Craigielea' from memory. On the other hand, I'm assured by multiple people who've studied 'Craigielea' that it takes a skilled musician to find much relationship at all between the tunes of Christina's 'Waltzing Matilda' and Robert Barr's 'Craigielea', and that it would be far easier to say that Christina composed an original tune. (So perhaps Christina was being self-effacing, knew it was a new tune, but felt it appropriate to hide her original talents in deference to the people around her. Remember that this was on a country property, where quite a few women evidence the same behaviour patterns today .... Sorry Germaine, but it's true).

For the record, I haven't yet discovered the years of Christina Macpherson's birth (c. 1870?) or death (c. 1950?), but I understand that she never married, and is buried in Melbourne (in a grave that was for many years unmarked). But several descendants of her family have been in communication with me, so it's very likely that those dates are known.

According to J.J. Fuld ('Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk', various editions, up to 4th, 1995, Dover, New York), Oscar Mendelsohn (in 'A Waltz with Matilda' Melbourne, 1966) contended that the tune was composed by Harry Nathan (1866-1906), an organist at Townsville Cathedral (on the Queensland coast). This theory appears to be based on Nathan's name appearing on a manuscript published some time after 1895. The theory isn't very convincing (and the music may have been a different version anyway).

Here are some sources of the words, score or browser-playable performances:

• the only downloadable rendition of the original song that I've come across, in Real Audio format, by John Williamson, on the Waltzing Matilda site in Winton, 360K. Note that the words he uses are updated a little from Banjo's version, and so is the interpretation of the music ...
• the score, words and a MIDI version of the tune, from WA's Hans Stammel
• a Quicktime audio version of the tune, on the site of WA's Hans Stammel, but originally from Philip Heggie
• the score, words and a MIDI version of the tune at Hambone's site
• these three sources from c. 1995 seem to have died, but I might as well keep the old URLs intact, to help us track down where they live now:
  • Wongawilli Colonial Dance Club's transposed version
  • the guitar chords for it
  • DigitalMuse (an Australian Folk Songs site). This includes a recording
• a few recordings can be found on file-sharing services / P2P

(2) The later, very popular, 'Victorian' or 'Marie Cowan' Version

The first publication of 'Waltzing Matilda' in the form of sheet-music did not use Christina Macpherson's tune, but a different one attributed to Marie Cowan; and this is the version that is most commonly played.

According to J.J. Fuld ('Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk', various editions, up to 4th, 1995, Dover, New York), it was published in 1903 by Inglis and Co., of 60 & 62 York Street, Sydney. (The company seems to no longer exist. I have a vague memory of hearing the name in the 1970s in the context of the beef cattle industry).

The music was stated on that first edition to have been "arranged" by Marie Cowan, but in later editions she is accredited as the composer. Fuld attributes this information to Sidney May, 'The Story of 'Waltzing Matilda'" (Brisbane, 1955), and states that the authorship of Paterson and Cowan has been established in an Australian court, 'Sydney Daily Telegraph', March 14, 1959, p. 3. I have not seen either of those sources. (Nor have I seen Fuld. I've relied on the efforts of yet another correspondent for everything in this and the preceding paragraph!).

A Sydney Morning Herald article on 20 December 2002 suggested that "Cowan was commissioned to "rejig" 'Waltzing Matilda' to refer to Billy Tea and, in possibly the first product placement ever, the "Billy" boiled scene was crammed into the chorus to remind the listener of those finely brewed tea leaves from Billy Tea. The 1903 sheet music clearly shows 'Billy', not only with a capital B but in inverted commas to signify its product status". If that's correct, then the popular version was a result of blatant commercialism, way back in 1903!

There seems to have been a lull for 35 years. Then the song exploded in popularity with the great bass-baritone Peter Dawson's recording in 1938. It went to war with everyone else, and it too came back a hero.

The real origins of the tune are very murky. A song called 'The Gay Fusilier' also uses the same tune. There have been claims that 'The Gay Fusilier' dates from a century or two earlier, but the earliest evidence for its existence is during the Boer War in South Africa (c. 1898-1902). That might seem a long way from Winton. But Banjo Paterson was in South Africa during the Boer War in 1901-1902, as a war correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The [Melbourne] Argus.

Did Banjo take the tune to South Africa?? Or did he hear the tune there, recognise a fairly good fit to his words, bring back a copy or a memory of it, which Mrs Marie Cowan then arranged, put on paper and later had attributed to her as a composition?? For Richard Magoffin's view on that, see the section below on Parodies of 'Waltzing Matilda'.

Here are some sources of the words, score or browser-playable performances:

• a Quicktime version of the tune, on the site of WA's Hans Stammel, but originally from Philip Heggie
• the score, words, and Quicktime and a MIDI version of the tune at Hambone's site
• Lesley Nelson's version on his/her excellent folk-music site
• here are what I'm assured are the guitar chords for it. (Another version, and a transcription for banjo, have unfortunately disappeared from their earlier URLs)
• the Digital Tradition Folksong Base at Xerox PARC, including a couple of different audio formats (but note that Waltzing Matilda is not a traditional folksong!). This site seems to be tied up in red tape these days, presumably because of the threatening actions of the copyright Nazis in RIAA; so try searching at Mudcat
• you'll find many, many recordings on file-sharing/P2P services. These offer lots of material whose downloading may breach copyright, and lots of material whose downloading does not breach copyright
• 24 different sheet-music versions are available from Allan & Co. Pty Ltd of Melbourne, aka Allans Music
• gratis 'sheet-music' is available from 8notes

(3) The very rare 'Cloncurry' or 'Buderim' Version

Richard Magoffin writes that this was created in Cloncurry in 1907 by Bob Macpherson, and his girlfriend, Josephine Pene, a music teacher. It also used the original Paterson text. I've never heard this, but have the impression that it's a variation on the Christina Macpherson tune. I'm unaware of any transcription or recording of it.

A correspondent by the name of Dennis O'Keefe (presumably the same DO'K as the singer whose recording is mentioned under performances, and who runs another Waltzing Matilda site) advises me that it is also called the 'Buderim' version. Cloncurry is in north-western Queensland, and Buderim in south-eastern Queensland, whereas Winton is in central-west Queensland, hundreds of kilometres from both of them.

Miscellania

Here are some related facts that may (or may not) appeal to you:

• 'Waltzing Matilda' is the marching tune of the 1st Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR), based in Townsville. The ex-member of 1RAR who drew this to my attention said that in the early 1990s the band ran a book each year on how many times that year they would play the tune, with the person who guessed closest to the actual number scooping the pool
• I understand that the tune (without the words) is the marching song of the U.S. 1st Marine Division. In 2003, Col Pat Garrett USMC confirmed that it was/is played every morning immediately after The Marines Hymn ('From the Halls of Montezuma . . .') following the raising of the National colo(u)rs at 0800, and at Divisional parades. Further, "The Division was raised at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina in early 1941, and became associated with Waltzing Matilda when the Marines came to Melbourne in early 1943 for rest and refit following the successful retaking of Guadalcanal, and before it returned to combat at Cape Gloucester in New Britain in the Northern Solomons in September of that year"
• another American officer advised me in 2003 that "it is also the unofficial song of the 1st Battalion, 77th Field Artillery, part of the US 1st Cavalry Division, activated in Australia during WWII. As a young lieutenant, joining the officer's club at Camp Pelham, Korea, 1961, my instructions were that I could not join until I had memorized the words, and the history, and sung the song, unaccompanied, and without even my first beer, to the assembled officers"
• it's been translated into Esperanto by Ralph Harry, a distinguished Australian diplomat, 1917-2002. I first heard this from Wim Posthuma, a radio-station operator in the wilds of Sweden. I was subsequently told about his obituary by another visitor to this page, an Australian journalist called Craig Liddell
• if you want to see how 'Waltzing Matilda' comes out in other languages, try submitting it to automatic translators, such as Free Translation
• the 1971 Australian Children's Picture Book of the Year Award went to Desmond Digby for 'Waltzing Matilda'
• a Pennsylvania story-teller and collector told me in 2003 that he heard it this way: "In Australia in the nineteenth century, a woman was known as a 'Hilda', as in "I saw him last week in town talkin to a couple ah hildas". When Europeans were first settling Australia, women were very scarce, and the few women who were there would not choose to settle down with a swagman, for many obvious reasons. So, sans companion, the swagman's Hilda was his swagger stick and tucker bag. When it came time to move on, for any of many reasons, it was time to 'waltz my Hilda' that is, move on. Waltzing my Hilda in the changes language brings became 'Waltzing Mathilda'". I've never heard the word 'Hilda' used like that, and there's no entry in the Macquarie Dictionary; but it's a pleasant enough idea
• just for fun, here's a piece of silly journalism

'Tom Traubert's Blues'

An American called Tom Waits has a song that appropriates some of the words and some of the (popular 'Marie Cowan' version of the) tune. I do hope that he understands American copyright law (:-)} In the words of Macquarie University's David Christian (who gave me the lead on this one), it's a "Vietnam vet alcoholic down and out stream of consciousness" song.

Web-sites on Tom Waits are highly unreliable, so if you're trying to find this, then you're best-advised to use a search-engine with the string <Waits "Tom Traubert">. The song is on his 'Small Change' album of 1976, and also on a collection of 1985 called 'Asylum Years'. I gather that Rod Stewart recorded a variant on his 'Unplugged' album.

'The Bold / Gay Fusilier' / 'The Rochester Recruiting Sergeant'

Many derivative works use the basic tune of 'Waltzing Matilda', particularly the more commonly played Marie Cowan version.

A very interesting case is 'The Bold Fusilier', aka 'The Rochester Recruiting Sergeant', which uses the Marie Cowan version of the tune. In 1998, the 'Waltzing Matilda' authority Richard Magoffin was quoted in a Mudcat thread to the following effect:

"There is an English song which pretends to come from the time of the Duke of Marlborough, 'The Bold (or Gay) Fusilier', but it is really a parody of 'Waltzing Matilda' from the Boer war, which was attended by the fusiliers, by Banjo Paterson, and many other Australians who sang our song.

"There is no record anywhere of the existence of this song prior to 1900 by way of any manuscript. The British Museum wrote in 1968 that they had never found any trace of the song. The British Folk Song and Dance Society had received many requests but, likewise, found no record.

"The Mayor of Rochester and the editor of the Fusilier's magazine were challenged some years ago to present pre-Matilda evidence for their song. They were not able to do so, while insisting that hearsay evidence in England was sufficient. English folklore authority, Vaughan Williams, considered that the earlier existence of the song was very doubtful because its language was not appropriate to the early eighteenth century period it pretended to represent".

I have two doubts about Richard's analysis. One is that Vaughan Williams' doubts are about the words, not the tune. The other is that the song that went to South Africa, presumably with Banjo, would have had to have been Banjo's original words, with the 'Christina Macpherson' tune. So what came back could have been much the same words, but to the tune of 'The Gay Fusilier'. (But that then raises the question as to who invented 'The Gay Fusilier'/'Marie Cowan' tune during the Boer War! Maybe it was some soldier's corruption of a South African folk-song??).

Parodies

Whether 'The Bold Fusilier' is a 'steal' from 'Waltzing Matilda' or not, there have been a few outright parodies of the song, demonstrating various levels of humour and bad taste. They include:

• 'Walking a Bulldog' - a British interpretation (probably by some expatriate Australian taking the piss out of the poms ...)
• 'Once a Jolly Pastor', which is a rather nasty variant on the theme of 'the dingo took my baby'
• a Bali version
• Cracking Computers, a cyber-version
• one from Papua New Guinea, which a friend from schooldays drew to my attention and prepared the text for: 'Kai Kai the Buai'
• a dig at the Australian bludge mentality, which appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on 4 June 2001
• a brilliant, 'Politically Correct Waltzing Matilda' is sung by John Shortis & Moya Simpson, who live at Bungendore near Canberra, and who performed it at the well-known School of Arts Cafe in nearby Queanbeyan in 1995-96. I have a 4-track CD that my daughter found me, with the song on it - "Proceeds to St Vincent de Paul". But John told me that his brother ,Mark Shortis, owns the copyright, and I can't track him down; so I don't have permission to convert it and make it available on the site
• a Texan told me in 2003 about a book by a Canadian radar operator who served during World War II. The book refers to a the tune being sung with the words "Ops in a Mossie, ops in a Mossie, who'll go on ops in a Mossie with me" (ops = combat operations, Mossie = Mosquito, a British-built two-seater aircraft), followed by more verses about "Ops in a Wimpy" (Wellington bomber) and on through the entire RAF inventory (if the beer lasted long enough)

Other Sites

This was the very first place on the entire World-Wide Web that you could find information about Waltzing Matilda, and I believe it to be the most authoritative. However, you may like to follow up a few other sites that have appeared subsequently:

• Richard Magoffin's home-page
• 'Waltzing Matilda' at the Australian National Library
• Hambone (a.k.a. Warren L. Ham) runs a Banjo Paterson site, which includes the original version, and the popular, Marie Cowan version
• a tourism entry for the nearby town of Winton
• WA's Hans Stammel
• a rather over-blown Australian site which supports the sale of an audio-CD, but which provides information as well
• the town of Winton's tourism site
• eine interessante deutsche Perspektive
• a brisk, but somewhat misleading, interpretation (but for a peripatetic Canadian tourist, not bad ...)
• a thread in a folk-music discussion list
• and here are some dead links that might be resuscitated someday:
  • Richard Magoffin's Matilda Expo and Heritage Theatre
  • Senani Ponnamperuma's page (a young Australian of Sri Lankan origin, who has won lots of prizes for his pages)
  • a useful entry in the FAQ for the newsgroup soc.culture.australian
  • a briefer entry in another set of Australian FAQs
  • a reference in another FAQ, which purports to be Australian, but seems from context and style to be American; and

The Riddle

A riddle that circulates from time to time is 'What was the name of the swagman?'.

The answer is usually Andy. Why? Because of the line repeated in the chorus, e.g.: 'Andy sang as he tucked that jumbuck in his tuckerbag'.

The Sydney Morning Herald of 22 November 1999 offered an answer I'd never heard before, from Tony Winton of Mosman, who claimed that the Swagman's name was Juan. That's because of the line 'Juan's a jolly swagman'. The following day, the paper quoted Brian Millett of Yass as saying that this Juan bloke may have been a cousin of the famous Mexican alluded to in the U.S. National Anthem - José Canyusee.

Also on 23 November 1999, the Herald quoted Alexander Tolnay of Berlin, who said that, reflecting the origins of the poem, the Swagman really must have been a German rather than someone of Spanish extraction. So his name would have been Hans ('Hans a jolly swagman ...').

If you're not Australian, and you've read all the way down to here, then you've presumably worked out that a lot of Australians don't think life should be taken too seriously ...

Acknowledgements

A great deal of the current knowledge about this topic is derived from the work of Richard (Dick) Magoffin, PO Box 123, Kynuna, QLD, 4823. Kynuna is near Winton, in central-west Queensland. Magoffin established the Matilda Expo and Heritage Theatre at Kynuna in 1994.

Magoffin's work has been used in multiple TV documentaries. His own published works on the topic include:

• 'Fair Dinkum Matilda', Mimosa Press, 1973
• 'Waltzing Matilda: The Story Behind the Legend', ABC Books, 1987 ( 135 pp.)
• ''The Political Paterson and Waltzing Matilda', Matilda Expo, 1998
• 'The Providence of Waltzing Matilda', c. 2000

In June 2000, Magoffin 'got a gong', specifically a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "For service to Australian folklore as an author of bush ballards and songs, and to the promotion and preservation of Australia's cultural heritage".

Dick passed away on 4 May 2006.

Another source of information is the research of Harry Hastings Pearce (1897-1984), documented in 'On the origins of Waltzing Matilda' (Hawthorn Press, 1971) and 'The Waltzing Matilda debate: replies to criticism, new verification on the Bold Fusilier, Josephine Pene, etc.' (1974).

Paterson had kept quiet about the origins of the song throughout his life, but Magoffin draws attention to Paterson's own succinct account of the song's genesis in his 'Complete Works', published by Allen & Unwin. 2nd volume, page 500.

Winton, the 900-person town nearest to the station (if you're American, that's what you'd call a 'ranch') where the song was written, has used it as the focal point of its tourism services, the Waltzing Matilda Centre.

Over the years, many, many people have contributed many, many snippets of information that have improved this site. If you find anything on the site that's wrong or misleading, or if you know something else that I should be telling people about, or some other sites that I should be pointing to, please let me know!

Administrative Notes

This document is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/index.html

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 1995-2003

• preparations from August 1994
• launch 11 February 1995
• continual expansion March 1995 to February 2001
• major revision to the information about the three versions of the song, and the copyright aspects, on 20 May 2001
• another parody on 4 June 2001
• a small correction on 30 October 2001
• more sheet-music on 10 January 2002
• more on 'And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda' on 21 April 2002
• more on Ralph Harry on 15 June 2003
• further enhancements on 3 December 2003
• re-formatting on 17 January 2005
• Tribute to Richard Magoffin on 5 May 2006
• minor updates 2007 and 2009
• Notice of the ABC radio program on 2 February 2010
• Annual Dinner notice on 1 March 2013
• I HAVE A FAIR FEW UPDATES TO DO ... PLEASE BE PATIENT ...

Cross-Links (nothing whatsoever to do with 'Waltzing Matilda')

Anthony Jacques Cheeper/Clarke (1837-1918), and his five wives: Catherine Ann Spilsbury-Cheeper, Mary Wanless-Clarke, Emma Fanny Terry-Clarke, Kate Davidge-Clarke, Amy Niel Clark-Cheeper

William Haskyns, John Haskins, Joseph Haskins, John Roberts

John Whiteman, Thomas Russell, Robert Winfield, Samuel Maxey Wagstaff, Keziah Wagstaff, Thomas Maxey, George Favel

The content and infrastructure for these community service pages are provided by Roger Clarke through his consultancy company, Xamax. From the site's beginnings in August 1994 until February 2009, the infrastructure was provided by the Australian National University. During that time, the site accumulated close to 30 million hits. It passed 75 million in late 2024. Sponsored by the Gallery, Bunhybee Grasslands, the extended Clarke Family, Knights of the Spatchcock and their drummer

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Created: 15 February 1995 - Last Amended: 1 March 2013 by Roger Clarke - Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
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