A comprehensive collection of Australian Folk Songs would contain hundreds, maybe thousands of songs. Songs in many different languages, Aboriginal songs, songs from school playgrounds, from factories, from office towers, as well as from the bush. Some of the songs we would all know well and others would be completely new to us. Some would be generations or centuries old and some would refer to events that happened last year.
This collection is much simpler. Out of the hundreds available, 101 have been chosen, mainly old songs, songs of the last century.
Most of the songs could be called Bush Songs because they are about life in rural Australia and the men and women who worked on the land.
Some of the oldest songs are songs of the convicts, songs like Jim Jones, The Convict Maid, Van Dieman's Land or Moreton Bay, songs which vividly describe the brutal origins of the colony.
Then there are the shearers songs, with their description of the skill involved in taking the wool off with a variety of hand and electric shears.
There are songs of the Bushrangers, the outlaws and rebels who roamed the continent over a period of 50 years in the last century, the Wild Colonial Boy, Ben Hall and, of course, Ned Kelly.
The nomadic working life of cattle drovers and the long hauls of the bullock drivers are depicted in songs like The Overlander, A Thousand Mile Away and Nine Miles from Gundagai. Gold miners and shearers cooks and cane cutters are here as well.
There's also a fantastic ram and the daring escape of Fenians who get rescued by a Yankee ship from their gaol in Fremantle. Henry Lawson has thrown in a couple of his poems The Shearers Dream and a militant strike song Freedom on the Wallaby. Banjo Paterson has contributed Waltzing Matilda with a tune you may not have heard, and a militant shearers song, Travelling Down the Castlereagh.
Each song in the collection has a tune for you to play, often the tune will be familiar, but some will not be so well known. Many of the songs have been collected with a number of tunes.
Each song is accompanied by notes about the song, where it was first printed, who collected it, and who wrote it if that is known. There is also a glossary a bibliography and a map of Australia to find the places mentioned in the songs. You can print out the words and the music of each song.
About the Demonstration Version
Copy the program to your hard disk for bet results. If you have a colour Macintosh the program will be in colour, although it will run on a Mac Plus or Classic if you have 4 MB of RAM. It is a stand alone program so you dont need HyperCard for it to work.
When you start the program a scrolling list appears for you to select the songs and other features of the song book
ShareWare version
In the demonstration version there are only 15 of the songs. The song titles beginning with 2 dashes are not operational.
If you like the program and wish to have a complete program sent to you on a high density floppy then please sent $30.00 or £15.00 to . . .
