Title

[The song of the bush by Cyrus Mason]

Author

The Argus.

Source

Argus (Melbourne).

Details

23 January 1855, page 5, column 6.

Publication date

23 January 1855

Type

Publication Review

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

[The Songs of the Bush, by Cyrus Mason]

We have received a copy of an original song, published by Mr Cyrus Mason, which has for its title “The Song of the Bush.” It is illustrated by a lithograph of rather primitive execution, which depicts four hirsute bush men, engaging themselves with a smoke and bottled beer, in the foreground a fifth frying chops, and three old men kangaroos hopping about in the distance. The melody of the song, which is in C, is light and pretty, but the poetry may be excepted to in some few particulars. Without being hypercritical, we must express a doubt of the beauty of the alliance between the “hot” words and the “cold” frown of tho proud man, which is shadowed in the first verse. We also confess entire ignorance of the meaning “of infamy, riotous treachery's scene.” The “clock of the poor man" is an ingeniously conceived image, and recalls vividly to our memory favourite timepiece of Dutch manufacture (once possessed by our washerwoman) and its cuckoo lodger who became suddenly developed and burst into violent song on the occurrence of every full hour. The idea, in our judgment, loses much potential effect by the explanation furnished in a note, by which we are informed that the said clock is no other than the laughing jackass, whose melody, it appears, announces the rising and setting of the sun. The author also informs us that “the kangaroo ‘possum are all left unshorn;” a fact, indeed, necessary to told, as we were previously unaware that the marsupials in question were usually submitted to the shearing process. The semi-melancholic allusion to the absence in Australian forests of tho little cock robin, the lark, and other familiar specimens in cockney ornithology, reminds us of the immortal Catnach; still more so does the triumphant gratulation, that, notwithstanding this deprivation in question, we are blessed with “the cunning magpie and proud cockatoo." Having thus given our opinion upon the most prominent features of the new and original “Song of the bush,” we leave our readers to form theirs.

[The Argus (Melbourne), 23 January 1855, p.5, col.6.
 

Last Updated

07 Oct 2020