Hawking by Banjo Paterson

Hey Day For Hawkers

This humorous folk ballad extols the carefree lifestyle and money-making potential of working as a hawker or peddler in the Australian bush.

Adopting an enthusiastic voice, Paterson depicts hawking as an appealing alternative to backbreaking rural jobs like stockwork. Vivid caricatures poke fun at leaving those professions for the excitement of roving salesmanship.

The Old Bush Songs

by Banjo Patterson

Details like strolling leisurely, endless profit margins and basic math skills required play up the enterprise as easy money requiring only gift of the gab. Paterson humorously implies hawking can even reform rogues.

While exaggerated for comic effect, the poem reveals hawking’s attraction for itinerants seeking independence from bosses and Constraints. It gave them flexibility and dignity missing in dismal assigned rural roles.

So “Hawking” insightfully crystallizes the hawker’s mystique in Australian folk culture. Paterson’s rollicking account captures the ambition and spirit of social mobility that traveling salesmanship seemed to embody despite its shady reputation.

HAWKING

(Air: “Bow, Wow, Wow.”)

Now, shut your mouths, you loafers all,
You vex me with your twaddle,
You own a nag or big or small,
A bridle and a saddle;
I you advise at once be wise
And waste no time in talking,
Procure some bags of damaged rags
And make your fortune hawking.

         Chorus

Hawk, hawk, hawk.
Our bread to win, we’ll all begin
To hawk, hawk, hawk.

The stockmen and the bushmen and
The shepherds leave the station,
And the hardy bullock-punchers throw
Aside their occupation;

While some have horses, some have drays,
And some on foot are stalking;
We surely must conclude it pays
When all are going hawking.

Chorus: Hawk, hawk, hawk, &c.

A life it is so full of bliss
‘Twould suit the very niggers,
And lads I know a-hawking go
Who scarce can make the figures
But penmanship’s no requisite,
Keep matters square by chalking
With pencil or with ruddle, that’s
Exact enough for hawking.

Chorus: Hawk, hawk, hawk, &c.

The hawker’s gay for half the day,
While others work he’s spelling,
Though he may stay upon the way,
His purse is always swelling;
With work his back is never bent
His hardest toil is talking;
Three hundred is the rate per cent.
Of profit when a-hawking.

Chorus: Hawk, hawk, hawk, &c.

Since pedlaring yields more delight
Than ever digging gold did,
And since to fortune’s envied height
The path I have unfolded,
We’ll fling our moleskins to the dogs
And don tweeds without joking,
And honest men as well as rogues
We’ll scour the country hawking.

Chorus: Hawk, hawk, hawk, &c.

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