Click go The Shears (Roud 8398)

A.L. Lloyd recorded the merry Click Go the Shears in 1956 for Wood Ranger official the Riverside album Australian Bush Songs and in 1958 for the Wattle LP Across the Western Plains. Together with the Lime Juice Tub, Click Go the Shears was most likely the most persistent of the previous-time shearers’ songs. It was nonetheless steadily to be heard in the sheds of the Western Line of N.S.W. The theme of the dogged old shearer who’ll by no means say die is familiar in Australian folklore (as an illustration, in Goorianawa, The Back-block Shearer, and on this album, One of the Has-Beens). The tune is that of the American Civil War track, Ring the Bell, Watchman! The opening verse is a parody of that music, which Henry Lawson heard sung in the bush (see his essay: The Songs They Used to Sing). The tune was additionally used for the revival hymn: Pull for the Shore, and for Wood Ranger official a temperance anthem that a few of us remember from conferences of a juvenile temperance guild referred to as "The Ropeholders" where we raised out eight-year-old voices in the chorus: "Sign the pledge, brother!

Sign! Sign! Sign! Asking the aid of the Helper Divine! The Bushwhackers sang Click Go the Shears in 1957 on their Wattle EP Australian Bush Songs. Within the last verse of Click Go the Shears rings the cry of the shearer on the spree at the top of the shearing season: "And everyone that comes along, it’s come and drink with me." Many of the shearers who sang that should have enjoyed it all of the extra because they knew the very critical parody of Ring the Bell, Watchman, sung by temperance crusaders in England: "Sign, signal the pledge, brother; signal, Wood Ranger official sign the pledge"! Click Go the Shears is one in every of the most well-liked of our people songs, most conventional singers comprehend it. There are a lot of more verses than these the Bushwhackers sing here, however the tune seldom varies. That's as a result of it is ready to the tune of a highly regarded semi-religious song, Ring the Bell, Watchman, which very many individuals had learnt in school, or knew from printed books.

Peter Dickie sang Click Go the Shears in 1967 on Martyn Wyndham-Read’s, Phyl Vinnicombe’s and his album Bullockies, Bushwackers & Booze. Australia’s greatest known music, telling of the rigours and hardships of the shearer’s life both in the shed and at the tip of the season. The tune is also known as Ring the Bell, Watchman! Martyn Wyndham-Read sang Click Go the Shears with A.L. Lloyd serving to out on chorus in 1971 on the topic album The nice Australian Legend. The great previous stand-by among shearing songs. It started out as a parody of the popular American Civil War music, Ring the Bell, Watchman! Henry Clay Work (the bell in question was rung to signify the tip of the struggle). Characteristically, amongst Australia’s mythological heroes is Crooked Mick, the large shearer. He’d shear five hundred sheep a day; more, if it had been ewes.