> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > The Lime-Juice Tub

The Lime-Juice Tub

[Trad.]

A.L. Lloyd recorded this song in 1956 for his album Australian Bush Songs and either he or Ewan MacColl sang in 1957 on Convicts and Curreny Lads. Lloyd recorded it again in 1971 together with Martyn Wyndham-Read on the album the Great Australian Legend. This track was re-released in 1994 on the Australian CD The Old Bush Songs. A.L. Lloyd wrote on the latter LP's backside:

A liveley shearer named Turnbull sang this over and over as he worked in a shed near Bethungra, New South Wales, around 1930. The tune is as I remember it from him. Likewise some of the words. The text has been filled out a bit from a version published in the Sydney Bulletin in 1898. The song is also known as Rub-a-dub-a-dub or The Tar-boys' Tub.

and in the accompanying booklet:

In early Australia, cattle meant more than sheep, and the cattle-hand on his horse felt himself superior to the humble shepherd. But in the period 1860-80 the wire fence was extending over a large area of Australia an the well-sinkers were finding water, and sheep raising was outstripping the cattle business. Between 1860 and 1890 the number of cattle remained fairly constant about two-and-a-quarter million, but the number of sheep increased from six million to nearly tenfold that number. By that time, the shearers were considering themselves the kings of the earth, proud of their skill and speed with the shears, and contemptuous not only of the new chum migrants who had arrived in Australia in English ships (“lime-juice tubs”) but also of the small mixed-farmers of the coastal district (called “cockies” because, it was said, their farms were too poor to raise anything but cockatoos). The champion shearer (the “gun” or “ringer”) was idolised; clumsy practitioners such as immigrants and cockies' sons were ridiculed, as the favourite working song called The Lime-Juice Tub clearly shows.

Lyrics

When shearing comes lay down your drums,
And step on the board, you brand-new chums.
With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

There's brand-new chums and cockies' sons,
They fancy that they are great guns.
With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

They fancy they can shear the wool
But the beggars can only tear and pull.
With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

You cocky farmers never need fret,
Your skinflint wives I'll not forget.
And I'm not a feller that's game to bet,
You're over your head and heels in debt.

With your hats of bark and your old dirt floors,
And your daughters never wear any drawers
Nor any kinds of boots and shoes;
They're wild in the bush like kangaroos!

A pannikin of flour and a sheet of bark
To wallop up a damper in the dark
With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

Well here we are in New South Wales,
Shearing lambs with daggy tails.
With a ra-dum, ra-dum, rub-a-dub-dub,
We'll send them home in a lime-juice tub.

Glossary

drums

swags, rolls of blankets

the board

the shearing floor

brand-new chums

newly-arrived migrants

lime-juice top

an English ship (on which lime-juice is served to prevent scurvy

cocky

small-scale farmer

damper

coarse bread, made with baking soda for leavening

with daggy tails

with lumps of excrement stuck to the wool of the tail

Acknowledgements

Lyrics transcribed from The Old Bush Songs by Reinhard Zierke. See also Mark Gregory's much longer Australian Folk Songs entry.