Bush ballad

The bush ballad, bush song or bush poem is a style of poetry and folk music that describes the life, character and scenery of the Australian bush. Bush ballads usually have a simple rhyme structure. They can be funny or sad. The words used are colourful, colloquial and Australian. They tell stories of action and adventure about bushranging, droving, droughts, floods, life on the frontier, and relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The first ballads were created by British and Irish settlers and convicts who brought with them the folk music of their homelands. They were usually not written down, but passed around verbally. The ballads grew into a unique style over the years, becoming very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Australians thought they were "an authentic expression of the national spirit".^[1] Through bush poetry, newspapers and magazines, like The Bulletin, promoted mateship, egalitarianism, anti-authoritarianism and a concern for the "battler" as being ideal Australian values.

Bush ballads are not as popular in modern times, but the poems written up to Federation are still some of the best-known and loved poems in Australia. The "bush bards" such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson are regarded as giants of Australian literature. Clubs and festivals devoted to bush poetry can be found throughout the country, and the tradition lives on in Australian country music.

1. ↑ Bush ballads Archived 2017-06-06 at the Wayback Machine, Australian Poetry Library. Retrieved 21 March 2016.