BALLAD MAKERS OF THE MACKENZIE COUNTRY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 897, 12 October 1956, Page 8

BALLAD MAKERS

OF THE MACKENZIE COUNTRY

By

W.

Vance

IN a leading article on "Colonial Minstrels" (Listener, June 1), it was said that "a ballad must tell a story, that it must be written in stanzas suitable for oral transmission, and that there should be nothing about it to suggest deliberate or literary contrivance. . . Even in a fairly recent period the isolation of its outback workers, and especially the sheepmen, fostered a campfire tradition." Such an environment is to be found in the Mackenzie Country, and almost every anthology of New Zealand verse carries at least one poem about this land. Perhaps no area in New Zealand has inspired the poet (and the artist) more, and the poems written about it could fill a small anthology. It is difficult to imagine that practical sheep farmers would allow themselves to be beguiled by the Muse, but the mames given to some of their stations Suggest that they do. Here are some of the station names in the Tasman Valley alone:-Ben Ohau, Rhoborough, Dusky, Ferintosh, Glentanner, Braemar, Balmoral, Irishman Creek, The Wolds. Names such as these have something of a poetic lilt and imagination. Boundary Keepers Not only station owners, but shepherds also have caught something of the poetry of the countryside, and I have been surprised at the excellence of some of the verses scribbled on the walls of lonely musterers’ huts. Right from earliest times this landscape has attracted poets, a fact noted by Donald McMillan, an early proprietor of the Tekapo Hotel. On looking through his visitors’ book one day, he was astonished to find it nearly filled up with the poems of a guest. "I dinna ken why all the queer people want to come to Tekapo," growled Donald as he locked the book away. Lonely boundary keepers who kept boundary in some river gorge and did not see another person for months at a time, also felt the lure of poetry. One such man was Davie Sutherland, who lived all alone, except for his faithful dogs, at the Jollie outstation. Not far from his hut is a deep hillock which rises straight out of the creek-bed. The base of the hillock is covered in native bush, but on top are bare, black rocks. These rocks have been worn smooth. Davie Sutherland knew the reason for this. On moonlit nights, especially at Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve), he could see the rocks covered with crowds of dancing fairies-their dancing feet had worn the rocks smooth. Because of this, the hill was called Tomnahurich (The Hill of the Fairies). Nobody now lives permanently at the Jollie outstation, so nobody can tell us if fairies still dance in the moonlight on top of Tomnahurich. However, Miss Eona Burnett has told me that, when bringing a string of mustering horses from the top of the Jollie Valley, sometimes night has fallen by the time she reached this spot. " I have seen Tomnahurich looking ghostly in the moonlight, and I have felt that if I gazed at those black rocks long enough I, too, would be seeing fairies," confessed Miss Burnett. Fight with Witches In search of inspiration. one poet used regularly to walk the thirty miles from Tekapo to Mount Cook station, rest : (continued on next page) ‘

THE bvilding in the title photograph is the Tekapo, Hote’

(continued from previous page) there for a few days, then walk back. The visit of one poet to the station was an eventful one. The crashings of rocks from the top of 8000 ft. Mount Burnett throughout the night gave alarm to musterers camped at the foot of the mountain. Dawn found the musterers scrambling up the mountain to see if an earthquake had rent it asunder. Near the top of the mountain they found a poet visitor in a-state of near collapse. He confided in them: "Unknown to anyone, I decided to keep an all-night vigil on top of this mountain. All went well till midnight, when I began to hear strange noises. Peering over the precipice, I saw dozens of witches climbing up the cliffs to get me. I could only keep them away by pushing rocks down on them-all night long, until daylight. Then they disappeared." The Boar Slayer So the stories of poets and poetry have been woven into the fabric of Mackenzie Country folk lore, and the. memory of bards like Archie McPhee, "The Boar Slayer of the Mackenzie," lingers on. Archie boasted that he and work could not agree, but when he asked John Rutherford, the owner of Opawa station for a job, Rutherford replied: "It would be a poor station that couldn’t find a job for you, Archie." He worked for a while, collected his cheque, then made for the hotel where he was assured of a crowded bar eager to listen to his tales of imagination and might that make the printed version of "New Zealand best stories" seem tame affairs. Still growing on the banks of Mackintosh’s Creek is the tree he planted as a thanksgiving for his deliverance from the banshees there. These reckless souls, the roving breed, the rowdy, and the rest, Have hit the trail north, south, and east; but most have journeyed West. Not all, however, of these poets "have journeyed West." One of the most noted of the ballad makers is Ernie Slow. Now in his seventies, Ernie has spent a lifetime in the Mackenzie Country-rabbit-ing, fencing, shearing, shepherdinganything that comes along. Ernie has never written down any of the many

poems he has composed, but, given the right environment, he can recite poem after poem. Every shepherd in the Mac-

kenzie Country knows "The Devil’s Daughter," and in his little hut, one sunny afternoon with the temperature

registering 93 degrees, Ernie fecited it to me. The Sardine Hut The scene of the ballad takes ‘place in the Sardine Hut, six feet by six feet, with a five-foot high lean-to roof. Situated near the Fork River, it was a boundary-keeper’s hut in the early days, and was so named because of its inability to accommodate all the musterers expected to stay there. This corrugated-iron hut had a corru-gated-iron door that moved with the wind. When a strong nor’-wester blew up, the wire handle of the door rubbed against the iron, making a screeching noise. Newcomers who did not know about this (and they were never told) weré mystified by the eerie noise, so that the hut gained its reputation of being haunted. The appearance here (on page 8) of Ernie Slow’s ballad is, I believe, its first publication.