Analysis of Jimmy Dooley's Army

Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)



There's a dashin' sort of boy
Which they call his Party's Joy,
And his smile-that-won't-come-off would quite disarm ye;
And he played the leadin' hand
In the Helter-Skelter Band,
Known as Jimmy Dooley's Circulating Army.
When the rank and file they found,
They were marchin' round and round,
They one and all began to act unruly;
And the letter that he wrote,
Sure it got the Labor goat,
So we set ourselves to deal with Captain Dooley.

Chorus
Whill-il-loo. High Ho!
We'll all be there you know,
The repartees and ructions they will charm ye;
And we'll see which we prefer,
Is it Dooley or McGirr,
To take command of Jimmy Dooley's Army.

When we're marchin' to the poll,
And we're under his control,
We sometimes feel a trifle unsalubrious;
For by one and all 'twas said
That if our objective's Red,
To call it claret-coloured makes us dubious.
Sure, the Fat Men one fine day
They chanced to come our way,
And we thought that we should bate them well and trooly;
But we let them pass us by
And not half a brick did fly,
'Twas then we tore our tickets up on Dooley.

Chorus
Whill-il-loo. High Ho!
We'll all be there you know,
The repartees and ructions they will charm ye;
And we'll see which we prefer,
Is it Dooley or McGirr,
To take command of Jimmy Dooley's Army.  


Scheme aabccbddbeeb FGGBHHB iifjjfkkillb FGGBHHB
Poetic Form Song
Metre 101111 1111101 011111111011 011011 0010101 1110110010 1010111 101101 11010111010 0010111 1110101 1110011111010 10 11111 111111 01011111 0111101 1110101 1101110110 111101 0110101 10110101 1110111 111011 11111011100 1011111 1111101 01111111101 1111111 0110111 111110101110 10 11111 111111 01011111 0111101 1110101 1101110110
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,274
Words 234
Sentences 11
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 12, 7, 12, 7
Lines Amount 38
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 243
Words per stanza (avg) 58
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 11, 2023

1:14 min read
95

Andrew Barton Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem. more…

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