Shooting The Moon

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Title:     Shooting The Moon
Author: Henry Lawson [More Titles by Lawson]

We lay in camp in the fringe of the mulga, and watched the big, red, smoky, rising moon out on the edge of the misty plain, and smoked and thought together sociably. Our nose-bags were nice and heavy, and we still had about a pound of nail-rod between us.

The moon reminded my mate, Jack Mitchell, of something--anything reminded him of something, in fact.

"Did you ever notice," said Jack, in a lazy tone, just as if he didn't want to tell a yarn--"Did you ever notice that people always shoot the moon when there's no moon? Have you got the matches?"

He lit up; he was always lighting up when he was reminded of something.

"This reminds me--Have you got the knife? My pipe's stuffed up."

He dug it out, loaded afresh, and lit up again.

"I remember once, at a pub I was staying at, I had to leave without saying good-bye to the landlord. I didn't know him very well at that time.

"My room was upstairs at the back, with the window opening on to the backyard. I always carried a bit of clothes-line in my swag or portmanteau those times. I travelled along with a portmanteau those times. I carried the rope in case of accident, or in case of fire, to lower my things out of the window--or hang myself, maybe, if things got too bad. No, now I come to think of it, I carried a revolver for that, and it was the only thing I never pawned."

"To hang yourself with?" asked the mate.

"Yes--you're very smart," snapped Mitchell; "never mind---. This reminds me that I got a chap at a pub to pawn my last suit, while I stopped inside and waited for an old mate to send me a pound; but I kept the shooter, and if he hadn't sent it I'd have been the late John Mitchell long ago."

"And sometimes you lower'd out when there wasn't a fire."

"Yes, that will pass; you're improving in the funny business. But about the yarn. There was two beds in my room at the pub, where I had to go away without shouting for the boss, and, as it happened, there was a strange chap sleeping in the other bed that night, and, just as I raised the window and was going to lower my bag out, he woke up.

"'Now, look here,' I said, shaking my fist at him, like that, 'if you say a word, I'll stoush yer!'

"'Well,' he said, 'well, you needn't be in such a sweat to jump down a man's throat. I've got my swag under the bed, and I was just going to ask you for the loan of the rope when you're done with it.'

"Well, we chummed. His name was Tom--Tom--something, I forget the other name, but it doesn't matter. Have you got the matches?"

He wasted three matches, and continued--

"There was a lot of old galvanized iron lying about under the window, and I was frightened the swag would make a noise; anyway, I'd have to drop the rope, and that was sure to make a noise. So we agreed for one of us to go down and land the swag. If we were seen going down without the swags it didn't matter, for we could say we wanted to go out in the yard for something."

"If you had the swag you might pretend you were walking in your sleep," I suggested, for the want of something funnier to say.

"Bosh," said Jack, "and get woke up with a black eye. Bushies don't generally carry their swags out of pubs in their sleep, or walk neither; it's only city swells who do that. Where's the blessed matches?

"Well, Tom agreed to go, and presently I saw a shadow under the window, and lowered away.

"'All right?' I asked in a whisper.

"'All right!" whispered the shadow.

"I lowered the other swag.

"'All right?'

"'All right!' said the shadow, and just then the moon came out.

"'All right!' says the shadow.

"But it wasn't all right. It was the landlord himself!

"It seems he got up and went out to the back in the night, and just happened to be coming in when my mate Tom was sneaking out of the back door. He saw Tom, and Tom saw him, and smoked through a hole in the palings into the scrub. The boss looked up at the window, and dropped to it. I went down, funky enough, I can tell you, and faced him. He said:

"'Look here, mate, why didn't you come straight to me, and tell me how you was fixed, instead of sneaking round the trouble in that fashion? There's no occasion for it.'

"I felt mean at once, but I said: 'Well, you see, we didn't know you, boss.'

"'So it seems. Well, I didn't think of that. Anyway, call up your mate and come and have a drink; we'll talk over it afterwards.' So I called Tom. 'Come on,' I shouted. 'It's all right.'

"And the boss kept us a couple of days, and then gave us as much tucker as we could carry, and a drop of stuff and a few bob to go on the track again with."

"Well, he was white, any road."

"Yes. I knew him well after that, and only heard one man say a word against him."

"And did you stoush him?"

"No; I was going to, but Tom wouldn't let me. He said he was frightened I might make a mess of it, and he did it himself."

"Did what? Make a mess of it?"

"He made a mess of the other man that slandered that publican. I'd be funny if I was you. Where's the matches?"

"And could Tom fight?"

"Yes. Tom could fight."

"Did you travel long with him after that?"

"Ten years."

"And where is he now?"

"Dead--Give us the matches."

 

[THE END]

Notes on Australianisms

Based on my own speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry overtones.

bagman: commercial traveller

Bananaland: Queensland

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch (a bend in a river cut off by a new channel, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.

billy: quintessentially Australian. It is like (or may even be made out of) a medium-sized can, with wire handles and a lid. Used to boil water. If for tea, the leaves are added into the billy itself; the billy may be swung ('to make the leaves settle') or a eucalyptus twig place across the top, more ritual than pragmatic. These stories are supposedly told while the billy is suspended over the fire at night, at the end of a tramp. (Also used in want of other things, for cooking)

blackfellow (also, blackman): condescending for Australian Aboriginal

blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers' strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab.

blanky or --- : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for "bloody"

blucher: a kind of half-boot (named after Austrian general)

blued: of a wages cheque: all spent extravagantly--and rapidly.

bluey: swag. Supposedly because blankets were mostly blue (so Lawson)

boggabri: never heard of it. It is a town in NSW: the dictionaries seem to suggest that it is a plant, which fits context. What then is a 'tater-marrer' (potato-marrow?). Any help?

bowyangs: ties (cord, rope, cloth) put around trouser legs below knee

bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed.

bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions ('mulga' and 'mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest.

bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy")

bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the 'bush'-- scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned Kelly--but usually very violent.

cheque: wages for a full season of sheep-shearing; meant to last until the next year, including a family, but often "blued' in a 'spree'

chyack: (chy-ike) like chaffing; to tease, mildly abuse

cocky: a farmer, esp. dairy farmers (='cow-cockies')

cubby-house: or cubby. Children's playhouse ("Wendy house" is commercial form))

Darlinghurst: Sydney suburb--where the gaol was in those days

dead marine: empty beer bottle

dossing: sleeping rough or poorly (as in a "doss-house")

doughboy: kind of dumpling

drover: one who "droves" cattle or sheep.

droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.

drown the miller: to add too much water to flour when cooking. Used metaphorically in story.

fossick: pick over areas for gold. Not mining as such.

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown.

half-sov.: a coin worth half a pound (sovereign)

Gladesville: Sydney suburb--site of mental hospital.

goanna: various kinds of monitor lizards. Can be quite a size.

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney

humpy: originally an aboriginal shelter (=gunyah); extended to a settler's hut

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch")

jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: "where's that jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag".

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang ("push"). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The _Bulletin_, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the "aggressive, soft-hatted "stoush brigade". Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character.

larrikiness: jocular feminine form

leather-jacket: kind of pancake (more often a fish, these days)

lucerne: cattle feed-a leguminous plant, alfalfa in US

lumper: labourer; esp. on wharves?

mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket.

Maoriland: Lawson's name for New Zealand

marine, dead: see dead

mooching: wandering idly, not going anywhere in particular

mug: gullible person, a con-man's 'mark' (potential victim)

mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region.

mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock

myall: aboriginal living in a traditional--pre-conquest--manner

narked: annoyed

navvies: labourers (especially making roads, railways; originally canals, thus from 'navigators')

nobbler: a drink

nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled

pannikin: metal mug

peckish: hungry--usually only mildly so. Use here is thus ironic.

poley: a dehorned cow

poddy-(calf): a calf separated from its mother but still needing milk

rouseabout: labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed. Considered to be, as far as any work is, unskilled labour.

sawney: silly, gormless

selector: small farmer who under the "Selection Act (Alienation of Land Act", Sydney 1862 could settle on a few acres of land and farm it, with hope of buying it. As the land had been leased by "squatters" to run sheep, they were NOT popular. The land was usually pretty poor, and there was little transport to get food to market, many, many failed. (The same mistake was made after WWI-- returned soldiers were given land to starve on.)

shanty: besides common meaning of shack it refers to an unofficial (and illegal) grog-shop; in contrast to the legal 'pub'.

spieler; con artist

sliprails: in lieu of a gate, the rails of a fence may be loosely socketed into posts, so that they may 'let down' (i.e. one end pushed in socket, the other end resting on the ground). See 'A Day on a Selection'

spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks.

stoush: a fight,

strike: the perhaps the Shearers' strike in Barcaldine, Queensland, 1891 gjc]

sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a "handout". Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for "tea" i.e. the evening meal. In view of the Great Depression of the time, these expressions of attitude are probably unfair, but the attitudes are common enough even today.

Surry Hills: Sydney inner suburb (where I live)

swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag" in Children of the Bush, also a PG Etext) Lawson also restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for "handouts". See 'travellers'.

'swelp: mild oath of affirmation ="so help me [God]"

travellers: "shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work" (Lawson).

whare: small Maori house--is it used here for European equivalent? Help anyone?

whipping the cat: drunk

[The end]
Henry Lawson's short story: Shooting The Moon

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