Brumby’s Run
Brumby is the Aboriginal* word for a wild horse. At a recent trial a New South Wales supreme court judge, hearing of Brumby horses, asked: “Who is Brumby, and where is his Run?”
It lies beyond the Western Pines
Towards the sinking sun,
And not a survey mark defines
The bounds of “Brumby’s Run”.
On odds and ends of mountain land,
On tracks of range and rock
Where no one else can make a stand,
Old Brumby rears his stock.
A wild, unhandled lot they are
Of every shape and breed.
They venture out ’neath moon and star
Along the flats to feed;
But when the dawn makes pink the sky
And steals along the plain,
The Brumby horses turn and fly
Towards the hills again.
The traveller by the mountain-track
May hear their hoof-beats pass,
And catch a glimpse of brown and black
Dim shadows on the grass.
The eager stockhorse pricks his ears
And lifts his head on high
In wild excitement when he hears
The Brumby mob go by.
Old Brumby asks no price or fee
O’er all his wide domains:
The man who yards his stock is free
To keep them for his pains.
So, off to scour the mountain-side
With eager eyes aglow,
To strongholds where the wild mobs hide
The gully-rakers go.
A rush of horses through the trees,
A red shirt making play;
A sound of stockwhips on the breeze,
They vanish far away!
Ah, me! before our day is done
We long with bitter pain
To ride once more on Brumby’s Run
And yard his mob again.
The Australian writer and solicitor Andrew Barton Paterson (1864-1941), often known simply as Banjo Paterson, is sometimes described as a bush poet. Of Scottish descent on his father’s side, he was born near Orange in New South Wales. Financial misfortunes forced the family to move to Illalong Station, and Andrew, when old enough to ride a pony, went to the bush school in Binalong. He later attended Sydney grammar school.
Paterson began publishing in 1889, in the Bulletin. His reputation as a poet and journalist was quickly established. His passion for horsemanship and horse-racing is reflected in the pen-name he chose: “The Banjo” was the name of his favourite thoroughbred.
His poems and ballads are metrically traditional, precisely crafted, and enriched by the idioms and vocabulary of the outback settlers. Despite some stereotypical characterisation, his narratives, whether comic, sentimental or heroic, brim with the energy of his lived experience of the bush.
In the title of this week’s poem, “Run” is a noun, and denotes the area or track frequented by animals – but, of course, there’s no missing the association with domestication: the “run” is also a yard for livestock. The horses Paterson is describing are not truly wild, although unbranded: they are likely to have belonged to settlers, and, escaped or abandoned, survived to breed new semi-feral generations. Paterson’s epigraph explains the possible origin of the word brumby. By personification, signalled by the capital B, Paterson raises Brumby’s status, turns him into a heroic character who is also imagined as the stockman’s neighbour (no pun intended). The second stanza brilliantly locates him on his unaccommodating territory, and also teases us with his identity: “On odds and ends of mountain land, / On tracks of range and rock / Where no one else can make a stand, / Old Brumby rears his stock.”
There is little anthropomorphism otherwise in the poem. Its descriptive strokes are appropriately light. The elusive hoof-beats are registered in the alternating tetrameter/trimeter rhythms: when the horses are seen they are significantly only “a glimpse of black and brown”. In the first stanza, the horses’ “run” is unmarked by human settlement and exploitation, but there’s a suggestion of decline; despite its endless-seeming reach, the terrain seems to be vanishing into the sunset.
It seems that the speaker and his eager horse are “gully rakers” with a thirst for chasing down and stealing from “the Brumby mob”. The envoi has a nostalgic tone, and is frank about the nature of the loss: “Ah, me! before our day is done / We long with bitter pain / To ride once more on Brumby’s Run / And yard his mob again.” The horses are admired, and even honoured, but their chief function is to be hunted, potential livestock whose capture provides some thrilling sport.
Brumby’s Run can be read here with other poems by Paterson.
* This introduction is Paterson’s wording. The specific etymology of ‘brumby’ is unclear; it has most frequently been attributed to the Bidjara language.
