Folklorist Keith McKenry (blessed are the folklorists, for they are guardians of our true culture and history) has been in town promoting his book about Australia's John Meredith (1920-2001), a folklorist and one of the world's greatest collectors of songs.
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Meredith was a tireless gatherer of the folk songs and verses sung and recited to him by older Australians, and one day in 1954 he and Nancy Keesing, alerted to the potential repertoire of an elderly lady, Ina Popplewell, went to Ina's incredible one-room stone hovel in Sydney's Darlington (vanished now, it was near Surry Hills).
In conversation with McKenry we pricked up our parochial ears during discussion of Ina because, though she was living in Sydney when Meredith arrived on her doorstep with his tape recorder, she had a head full of songs and verses she'd acquired as a child living in Queanbeyan (her father had been a Queanbeyan solicitor) and on the Monaro, where her father owned properties. In just that one visit she warbled and recited 20 pieces, all first told to her by her father, for Meredith and his contraption.
"She was an amazing source," McKenry enthuses, while reporting that they weren't able to record at Ina's place because her house (its gate tied up with a stocking to keep out what Ina called "bandits") had no electricity (and no running water, or a lavatory - she used one at nearby factory). But they found a nearby neighbour with the new-fangled electricity and a busy session of recording got under way.
And so we have today her enduring contributions to Australian folklore, trilled to Meredith on that day. She sang him sentimental drawing room ballads, Irish folk songs, musical hall songs, the inevitable song about a dying stockman. The ballad Frank Gardiner she sang him (about the dashing bushranger) is still much sung today, and she was its one and only source.
Farewell, adieu, to outlawed Frank, he was the poor man's friend.
The government has secured him, the laws he did offend.
He boldly stood his trial and him and answered in a breath
'And do what you will, you can but kill; I have no fear of death'.
Ancient Ina made a great impression on Meredith. He recalled "She was old and frail but when she recited you could see this little eight-year-old girl standing up at an Eisteddfod. And here's this little old lady - she'd suddenly thrown off 70 years and burst into verse."
Keith McKenry's More Than A Life: John Meredith and the Fight for Australian Tradition is at discerning book shops or online at McKenry's evocatively-named Fanged Wombat Productions.
