A.L. Lloyd recorded the merry Click Go the Shears in 1956 for 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 Together with the Lime Juice Tub, Click Go the Shears was probably essentially the most persistent of the outdated-time shearers’ songs. It was nonetheless regularly to be heard in the sheds of the Western Line of N.S.W. The theme of the dogged old shearer who’ll never say die is acquainted in Australian folklore (for instance, outdoor trimming tool in Goorianawa, The Back-block Shearer, and on this album, outdoor trimming tool One of the Has-Beens). The tune is that of the American Civil War song, Ring the Bell, Watchman! The opening verse is a parody of that song, which Henry Lawson heard sung within 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 a temperance anthem that a few of us remember from conferences of a juvenile temperance guild called "The Ropeholders" the place we raised out eight-yr-previous voices in the chorus: "Sign the pledge, brother!

Sign! Sign! Sign! Asking the help of the Helper Divine! The Bushwhackers sang Click Go the Wood Ranger Power Shears order now in 1957 on their Wattle EP Australian Bush Songs. Within the final verse of Click Go the Shears rings the cry of the shearer on the spree at the top of the shearing season: "And everybody that comes along, it’s come and drink with me." Many of the shearers who sang that will need to have enjoyed it all of the more because they knew the very critical parody of Ring the Bell, Watchman, sung by temperance crusaders in England: "Sign, sign the pledge, brother

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Pub: 18 Oct 2025 12:15 UTC

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