NEW  ZEALAND FOLK * SONG

By the Dry Cardrona Jack Winter's Song lyrics James K Baxter, music James McNeish, Don Toms

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A 1956 poem of Baxter's, modified and sung in his 1958 radio play, "Jack Winter's Dream".
The DRY Cardrona is a symbol of the spritual aridity of his early life, in contrast with the life-giving
springtime snowmelt waters of the WILD Cardrona that nourish the cherry trees along its banks.

C Oh I can G tell where the C cherries grow, Am By the dry Car-G-drona C Where I plucked them long a-F-go, On a G day when I was so-C-ber On a F day when C I was G so-C-ber. (Audience repeats the last line of each verse) My father wore a parson's coat By the dry Cardrona He kept a tally of the sheep and the goats, And I was never sober. My mother sewed her Sunday skirt By the dry Cardrona They say she died of a broken heart 'Cause I was never sober. I loved a young miss, and only one By the dry Cardrona She up and married the banker's son, For I was never sober. I courted a widow of forty-nine By the dry Cardrona She owned a stable and a Scheelite mine, But I was never sober. Oh lay my bones till the judgement crack By the wild Cardrona A blanket swag upon my back, To pillow me drunk or sober. All rivers run to the rimless grave Even the wild Cardrona, But never a one will come my way Till I am bone cold sober. But I can tell where the cherries grow, By the wild Cardrona Where I plucked them long ago, On a day when I was sober.

She owned a stable and a scheelite mine...

Scheelite, calcium tungstate, is an important source of tungsten, a very hard metal. It is named for the discoverer of tungsten, KW Scheele. The veins of scheelite in the Otago mountains also contained gold.

A folk enthusiast in Maine has transcribed a track of this song erroniously as "She owned a stable and a sheep like mine." Another American has queried the meaning of the exhortation to "buy the dry card-roller."

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I first heard 'By The Dry Cardrona' sung on radio 2YA in 1958 as the opening song in Baxter's radio play Jack Winter's Dream.

There were some differences; Heenan's original tune was a little rougher, the cherries were not picked but plucked and he didn't love a young miss but a girl, and in the final verse Jack Winter told of a bent black cherry tree.

However ballad-lovers have been singing it from memory for several decades now, and have molded it into its present form.

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Jack Winter's Dream is set in the depression of the 1930s. Jack Winter still tramps the now worked-out goldfields he knew in his prime, 50 years before.

NARRATOR: Look and listen. A star falls front the roof of the sky. A wind is beginning in the thick bush of the night. Noise of gently rising wind. It blows in Abelstown. quiet as a miner's ghost, sifting the shingle dust of the street for fool's gold. Under the sailing moon Abelstown is full of the empty dead. But no blood runs, except in the willow veins, and the cold water race that sighs all night like a naked girl under the old moon's eye. Rattle of stones. What did you hear then? The morepork, with blood on its claw, hooting. A rabbit screeching, with blood on its fur, as the weasel slashes and sucks? Slow footsteps. No: stoat and owl run to their holes. The dead hide under God's hand. A man is climbing the hill of the night, out of dry Abelstown. Voice singing. I can tell where cherries grow, By the dry Cardrona Where I plucked them long ago, On a day when I was sober My father wore a parson's coat By the dry Cardrona He kept a tally of the sheep and the goats, And I was never sober. My mother sewed her Sunday skirt By the dry Cardrona They said she died of a broken heart For I was never sober. Oh lay my bones till the judgement crack By the wild Cardrona! The blanket swag upon my back Will pillow me drunk or sober. I loved a girl, and only one By the dry Cardrona But she up and married the banker's son, For I was never sober. I courted a widow of forty-nine By the dry Cardrona She owned a stable and a Scheelite mine, But I was never sober. All rivers run to the rimless grave Even the wild Cardrona, But the black cherry bent my way One day when I was sober. NARRATOR: Who is singing on the night road when only the scared owls can hear him? It is Jack Winter. rabbiter, swagman and station rouseabout. Sixty-eight convictions for being happy in a public place. Jailed under the Dog Act he must wear a terrier's collar till the day Death takes it off. Twin brother to the Ephesian sleepers, he has forgotten the world of manhours and ordered mischief, wishes, agonies, hot love and cold pillows, plaster gnomes and paper doilies, for a lifelong dream in which he is winter walking Adam, and the green, gay, river-voiced, bush-thighed and mountain-breasted earth his care and his sole kingdom.

One bitter night, as Jack Winter sleeps in the ruins of the Drover's Rest, a derelict inn, scenes from the goldrush days come back to life and he has a final dream of gold and murder.

Charley Bird, the sly and greedy inn-keeper, is entertaining the ruffian Ballarat Jack and the ineffectual Preaching Lowrie.

A callow miner Young Trevelyan arrives with gold from the diggings. He is welcomed, fed, and entertained. He loses his heart to Charlie's seductive daughter Jenny ...and then he loses his gold and his life to Charlie's cut-throat razor.

Jack Winter watches it all, weeps for Young Trevelyan and then dies in his sleep. Years later a cherry tree grows up in the ruins of the inn where he and Young Trevelyan died.

Jack Winter's Dream was filmed in 1979. You can watch it here.

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James Keir Baxter 1926 - 1972

HEMI portrait in bronze by Joan Morrell. For more details, click HERE.

New Zealand's best known poet. He was born in Dunedin, to a father who was an objector to the first world war, and a mother who was interested in languages.

He began to write at the age of seven, and spent two years in Britain before returning home during the second world war. After the war he enrolled at Otago University, but quit a short time after.

In 1950 he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and in the mid 1950s he converted to Catholicism.

These facets of his life are reflected in his play, Jack Winter's Dream. "There is one notion that lies behind this play," he said. "The shedding of blood christens a place...the natural world shares in our guilt, our agony, and perhaps our redemption."

In 1966 he devoted his life to the drug addicts and alcoholics of Wellington and Auckland. In 1969 he established a commune at Jerusalem, up the Whanganui River, and three years later he was buried there, to be remembered worldwide for his poetry, and in New Zealand for his support of outcasts from society.

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