d a man from Lower Wattle,
Whom a shearer tried to throttle,
Hit out freely with a bottle,
There in Dandaloo.

Skin and hair were flying thickly,
When a light was fetched, and quickly
Brought a fact to view--
On the scene of the diversion
Every single, solid person
Come along to help Macpherson--
_All_ were Dandaloo!"

When the list of slain was tabled,
Some were drunk and some disabled,
Still we found it true.
In the darkness and the smother
We'd been belting one another;
Jack Macpherson bashed his brother
There in Dandaloo.

So we drank, and all departed--
How the "mobbing" yarn was started
No one ever knew--
And the stockmen tell the story
Of that conflict fierce and gory,
How we fought for love and glory
Up in Dandaloo.

It's a proverb now, or near it--
At the races you can hear it,
At the dog-fights, too!
Every shrieking, dancing drover
As the canines topple over
Yells applause to Grip or Rover,
"Give him 'Dandaloo'!"

And the teamster slowly toiling
Through the deep black country, soiling
Wheels and axles, too,
Lays the whip on Spot and Banker,
Rouses Tarboy with a flanker--
"Redman! Ginger! Heave there! Yank her!
Wade in, Dandaloo!"

A Ballad of Ducks

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting carriage and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told
This terrible tale of the days of old,
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks.

"Well, it ain't all joy bein' on the land
With an overdraft that'd knock you flat;
And the rabbits have pretty well took command;
But the hardest thing for a man to stand
Is the feller who says 'Well, I told you so!
You should ha' done this way, don't you know!'--
I could lay a bait for a man like that.

"The grasshoppers struck us in ninety-one
And what they leave--well, it ain't 'de luxe'.
But a growlin' fault-findin' son of a gun
Who'd lent some money to stock our run--
I said they'd eaten what grass we had--
Says he, 'Your management's very bad,
You had a right to have kept some ducks!'

"To have kept some ducks! And the place was white!
Wherever you went you had to tread
On grasshoppers guzzlin' day and night;
And when with a swoosh they rose in flight,
If you didn't look out for y