A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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Needless to say, the emu comes to a sudden, nasty end, thus providing a moral about
greed and dishonesty. Similarly anti-social behaviour is exhibited by the bower-bird,
who arises when the bell-bird’s chimes are heard and “shows by working overtime, /
The union he despises”. 1 There is a quaintness of ideas and expression in some of
these animal verses, evident particularly in the tale of the porcupine who was flooded
out of his home on the Condamine and who “humped his swag on the Barcoo track”,
only to be eaten by an omnivorous pelican. This incautious bird paid dearly for his
indiscretion, and after confessing his crime to the Friar-bird "“dropped and died on his
young wife’s breast”. The tongue-in-cheek moral propounded by the poet reminds
one of the mottoes once used in children’s writing books early this century:
The Clouds will gather, the Rain will fall –
The Moral, of course, ‘tis plain to us all –
Wear flannel in Winter across the chest
And never absorb what you can’t digest! 2
All of these poems have a distinctly Australian character of flavour, whether it be
about bower-birds, goannas, emus or porcupines Brady is writing. They are
Australian in their treatment of life, even when the language employed is halfheartedly
disguised. For example the kookaburra who mocks the poverty and
misfortune of a swagman is punished, but oddly the tale is told in a kind of mock
Middle English:
Lest ye be lyke ribald jackasse sitting slyly on hys lymbe,
Laugh ye not at others’ hardships, while in range, goode friends, lyke
hym. 3
The battle between the three Wombateers and the turnips, the mythical iguanaroo, the
patent baby whose india-rubber bones were fastened with copper rivets and the
Esquimo who lived on “walrus roast and blubber on toast” and who had “plenty of ice
in his tea” are presented to the reader in verses alive and witty, using the rhythms of
childhood skipping-ropes and nursery rhymes and often the repetitive refrains of folk
verse and ballad:
Three old women they went a-sailing
Over the Stormy Sea.
Hoodle-doodle-diddle-dum!
With two black cats to do the baling –
And one to make the tea.
Hoodle-doodle-diddle-dum!
They steered their boat with a puppu-dog’s tail,
Hoodle-doodle-diddle-dum!
With a petticoat tied on a broom for a sail,
Hoodle-doodle-diddle-dum!
Hoodle-doodle-diddledum dee! 4
1 “The Bower Bird”, Native Notions.
2 “The Pelican and the Porcupine”, The Native Companion, 1.8.1907
3 “Ye Jackasse”, Native Notions.
4 “Hoodle-Doodle”, ibid.