Analysis of Those Names

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



The shearers sat in the firelight, hearty and hale and strong,
After the hard day's shearing, passing the joke along:
The 'ringer' that shore a hundred, as they never were shorn before,
And the novice who, toiling bravely, had tommy-hawked half a score,
The tarboy, the cook and the slushy, the sweeper that swept the board,
The picker-up, and the penner, with the rest of the shearing horde.
There were men from the inland stations where the skies like a furnace glow,
And men from Snowy River, the land of frozen snow;
There were swarthy Queensland drovers who reckoned all land by miles,
And farmers' sons from the Murray, where many a vineyard smiles.
They started at telling stories when they wearied of cards and games,
And to give these stories flavour they threw in some local names,
Then a man from the bleak Monaro, away on the tableland,
He fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and he started to play his hand.
He told them of Adjintoothbong, where the pine-clad mountains freeze,
And the weight of the snow in summer breaks branches off the trees,
And, as he warmed to the business, he let them have it strong --
Nimitybelle, Conargo, Wheeo, Bongongolong;
He lingered over them fondly, because they recalled to mind
A thought of the bush homestead, and the girl that he left behind.
Then the shearers all sat silent till a man in the corner rose;
Said he, 'I've travelled a-plenty but never heard names like those.
Out in the western districts, out in the Castlereigh
Most of the names are easy -- short for a man to say.
You've heard of Mungrybambone and the Gundabluey Pine,
Quobbotha, Girilambone, and Terramungamine,
Quambone, Eunonyhareenyha, Wee Waa, and Buntijo --'
But the rest of the shearers stopped him: 'For the sake of your jaw, go slow,
If you reckon thase names are short ones out where such names prevail,
Just try and remember some long ones before you begin the tale.'
And the man from the western district, though never a word he siad,
Just winked with his dexter eyelid, and then he retired to bed.


Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFCGHHAAIIJJKLMMNDOOPQ
Poetic Form
Metre 011001100101 1001110100101 0101101011100101 0010110101101101 01010010101101 0101001010110101 1011011010110101 0111010011101 1010111101111 010110101100101 1101101011101101 01111011101101 101101101101 1111101001101111 111111011101 001101010110101 01111010111111 1111 110101100110111 01101100111101 101111010100101 111100101101111 10010101001 1101110110111 11110011 1101 111101 1011011110111111 111011111111101 1100101110110101 00110101011001110 11111010110111
Closest metre Iambic octameter
Characters 2,032
Words 361
Sentences 9
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 32
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 50
Words per line (avg) 11
Letters per stanza (avg) 1,587
Words per stanza (avg) 358
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:49 min read
39

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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