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Show More. She was playing it by ear and from memory so it may have undergone a few changes in her hands. The words supplied by Paterson were to transform it from obscure folk tune to one of the best known songs in the world. The phrase Waltzing Matilda therefore meant travelling along carrying your possessions with you in your bag. Waltzing is from the German term 'auf der walz' which meant travelling while learning a trade.
Young German apprentices workers in those days travelled from place to place, working under a master craftsman earning a living as they went and sleeping wherever they could. So the German word 'walz' became 'waltz' in Australia.
The waltz was a fashionable dance at the time, and Australians were familiar with it. Matilda has German origins too, and means Mighty Battle Maiden. It was a name given to females who accompanied soldiers during the Thirty Year Wars in Europe. The name came then came to mean "to be kept warm at night" and later to mean the great army coats or blankets that soldiers wrapped themselves with.
These were rolled into a swag and carried behind their shoulders while marching. Christina's brother, Bob, managed this vast property. While riding in a coach to Dagworth, they saw a swagman walking along the dusty road. Bob Macpherson turned to Banjo and said: "that's what they call Waltzing the Matilda".
During his stay at Dagworth, Bob Macpherson and Banjo frequently went for long rides around the station. One day they stopped at a billabong, the Combo Waterhole, where they found the remains of a recently slaughtered sheep. At this time, there were thousands of unemployed swagmen roaming the outback in search of work. Obviously, one of these men had killed the sheep. Bob Macpherson also told Banjo about the Sheep Shearers' Strike of September , which was a major revolt by the workers who sheared sheep.
They were demanding better wages from the wealthy graziers known as squatters , who owned these vast properties. This unrest also spilt over to Dagworth, where a group of 16 shearers set fire to the Dagworth shearing shed, killing over a hundred and forty lambs. Macpherson and three policemen had given chase to one of them, a man named Samuel Hoffmeister , who was said to be responsible for starting the fire.
They didn't catch Hoffmeister, but he was found dead a day later at the Four Mile Billabong near Kynun with a gunshot wound, which appeared to be a case of suicide. In a radio interview in , Banjo Paterson said, "The shearers staged a strike by way of expressing themselves, and Macpherson's woolshed was burnt down, and a man was picked up dead". There was also a story doing the rounds at that time about a police posse on the lookout for Harry Wood, a man accused of beating an Aboriginal boy to death.
They didn't find Harry. But they did come across a hapless swagman camped by a billabong possibly the Como billabong who took fright at the sight of the approaching police and jumped into the billabong and drowned. While at the station, Banjo frequently heard Christina play a tune on her zither sometimes called an autoharp. Banjo liked the " whimsicality and dreaminess " of the tune and thought it would be nice to set some words to it. Click on the image to hear the Waltzing Matilda tune being played in a Zither Autoharp.
Banjo, a lawyer by trade and a journalist by profession, was also an Banjo, a lawyer by trade and a journalist by profession, was also an accomplished poet.
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