Paterson’s Portrait of a Labourer’s Declining Dignity

Adopting the perspective of an elderly sheep washer, Paterson provides a moving glimpse into the declining working conditions and mistreatment of rural laborers in the bush.

Through melancholy recollection of better times, the speaker contrasts the respect and agency washers once held against their current exploitation. Vivid details like falling wages, poor provisions, and endless toil reveal a loss of dignity.

References to once feeling like a “man” who could enjoy leisure time point to the now dehumanizing nature of the work. Pride in skills gave way to joyless mechanization as squatters gained unchecked power over workers.

Paterson gives a poignant voice to dispossession and injustice through the elderly washer’s memories of bygone days. While exaggerated in portraying the past, the speaker’s grief resonates. His calls for worker solidarity reveal desperation.

So “The Sheep-Washers’ Lament” compellingly chronicles the decline in working conditions and bargaining power of Australian laborers. Paterson insightfully conveys the human costs of pastoral modernization and inequity.

THE SHEEP-WASHERS’ LAMENT

(Air: “The Bonnie Irish Boy.”)

Come now, ye sighing washers all,
Join in my doleful lay,
Mourn for the times none can recall,
With hearts to grief a prey.
We’ll mourn the washer’s sad downfall
In our regretful strain,
Lamenting on the days gone by
Ne’er to return again.

When first I went a-washing sheep
The year was sixty-one,
The master was a worker then,
The servant was a man;
But now the squatters, puffed with pride,
They treat us with disdain;
Lament the days that are gone by
Ne’er to return again.

From sixty-one to sixty-six,
The bushman, stout and strong,
Would smoke his pipe and whistle his tune,
And sing his cheerful song,
As wanton as the kangaroo
That bounds across the plain.
Lament the days that are gone by
Ne’er to return again.

Supplies of food unstinted, good,
No squatter did withhold.
With plenty grog to cheer our hearts,
We feared nor heat nor cold.
With six-and-six per man per day
We sought not to complain.
Lament the days that are gone by
Ne’er to return again.

With perfect health, a mine of wealth,
Our days seemed short and sweet,
On pleasure bent our evenings spent,
Enjoyment was complete.
But now we toil from morn till night,
Though much against the grain,
Lamenting on the days gone by,
Ne’er to return again.

I once could boast two noble steeds,
To bear me on my way,
My good revolver in my belt,
I never knew dismay.
But lonely now I hump my drum
In sunshine and in rain,
Lamenting on the days gone by
Ne’er to return again.

A worthy cheque I always earned,
And spent it like a lord.
My dress a prince’s form would grace.
And spells I could afford.
But now in tattered rags arrayed,
My limbs they ache with pain,
Lamenting on the days gone by,
Ne’er to return again.

May bushmen all in unity
Combine with heart and hand,
May cursed cringing poverty
Be banished from the land.
In Queensland may prosperity
In regal glory reign,
And washers in the time to come
Their vanished rights regain.