SOUTH AUSTRALIA Tap alse Lake Garaliggs® Munn Budge a ies. te jy tnt te mn counury: the shaded area is where today's speakers of $06 ‘and for which they know place names. Black citcles is were recorded or discussed Neivampaa language were born mark places where sone 228 KIDS THAT GOT LOST: VARIATION IN THE WORDS OF NGIYAMPAA SONGS TAMSIN DONALDSON Understanding of an unfamiliar culture is often distorted by Kinds of ignor eace which the student is unawgre of and therefore cannot plan ro reduce. It “i aditon being studied isa totally oral one its earlier stages wil also be ie ac ible tits present practitioners. Tape-ecordings of Neiyampas songs sravne back to 1986 have made it possible to undersiand both the consentions sane teadtion and the changes that have taken place in the cours of its cen fon, Hitherto unsuspected problems have been. revealed and a wolved, while others, now they have been identified, may prove saree By musicologist. By a metaphorically apt coincidence, the most ‘vealing recordings were of songs about searches for lst children. 1 Introduction People of Wangaaypuwan descent in western New South Wales ‘are no longer composing songs in their language, Neiyampaa, but & ‘number of songs composed in the early decades of the century are still remembered.! Words for five of these songs, as sung and fxplained to me by the late Sarah Johnson, were published as an appendix to my grammar of Ngiyampaa {Donaldson 1980]. In that grammar I mentioned that there were others for which it had so Far proven impossible to establish coherent texts. Those with memories Pr them felt unconfident either that they could sing the songs ‘right through’ or, more often, that they could ‘straighten them out’ well tnough for a translation to be made of the rather special kind that | have argued elsewhere’ to be necessary for Aboriginal song texts {Donaldson 1929). Recently, some Ngiyampaa speakers expressed an interest in hearing tape-recordings of songs they recalled relatives having sung for Jeremy Beckett in the late 1950s and for Luise Hercus ardecade Jater, Most of these singers were no longer alive, but sufficient ime had gone by for those who had known them to listen to their voices 11, Kassler and J, Stubington (eds.), Problems & Solutions: Occasional Esuys in Musicology presented to Alice M. Moyle, Sydney: Hale & iemonger, 1984, pp. 228-253.KIDSTHAT Gor LosT. 1 shall be dealing exclusively with the words sung, not the inuscal characteristics of performances. It seems clear teat there is, and some ren 20, Ome OF it integrally related to textual variaton and some of an ind. found getting on for thir : ber formianess either by the same singer ot by a numberof differcit singers. In one case, the singer was also the composer, What follows is an account of the change that began to take place in my appreciation of the nature of this so played the anthology and heard listeners” ion Would seem to be Nevemersite for all kinds of musicologieal explorenee ng tradition when 1 Neivampaa speakers discuss and on occasion reproduce the words One song even cir. productions of this tradition, Now it was Possible to study, together with Neiyampaa speakers, number of sets of words for certain songs, siderably from others, and to gather opinions as to how to interpret them. Suddenly, 1 was in a position to glimpse some of ihe ‘istinetive processes involved in the tradition’s trans Similar processes are likely to be involved quite a some varying con- Question was of a very dif Neiyampaa, Bock ag suberficially similar’, because such songs have rarely been studied enough for detailed comparisons between their cor Yintions of composition and performance 10 be possible. There are also some archival tape-recordings, particularly from the souks Set inst come from similar-seeming traditions which are now defunct. No one can be found to ‘straighten them out” from she perspective of a participant. Such performances may turn out to be Casier to study if we ask ourselves whether some of the processes of favampaa songs, 1 shall discuss a number of diftewe per- variation deducible from the Ngiyampaa recorded performances formances of two of the most widely-n ‘might have played a part in shaping them, too, Fred Biggs and one by Moolbong John he Nelyampaa songs are best described as occasional songs, q Their words consist typically of a few highly alfusi archival recordings of membered songs, one by Cn, Pon triation made Possible by Conventions of ‘Composition and Performance (@) The tosing of achild and the making of a song 4 fn 1931 oF 1932 a little boy got lost. The son of new selectors Giled Shields, who recently had taken up land out frome Keewong. ation in Ngivampaa country, he was with some older children ‘who saw some emu: ‘They put the dog on the emu, ancl they chased ‘ongs assume and commeni way both integrate and celebrate — community in which they are sung. incidents referred to, however slight t because they too were present, kno\ heard stories about the occasion, i on — and so in a the shared experiences of the The audience recognises the the background information, 'W the protagonists, or have232 ‘Tamsin Donaldson ‘Fred Biggs singing at Murrin Bridge in 1957. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Tom Clark KIDS THAT GOT LOST 233 them through; they was running behind them, and this kid followed them and got lost’ [Lizzie Williams, personal communication}. It was wintertime, and he was wearing only a short singlet. But he was ‘able to eat them crowfoot, we call them matha. Living on that, it saved him’ [Gus Williams 1967: LA1364]. People gathered from far and wide to join in the search, and Fred Biggs made a song about it. The words of the song consist of a series of more or less in- dependent remarks. They convey the emotional atmosphere of the search by relaying deductions from trackers’ clues as to the boy's whereabouts. The final remark voives the concern which underlies all the others: can he still be alive? The text, from Fred Biggs's own recorded performance [1956: LA627], is as follows: Text 1 (a) mgathi-pakaa kurraarr kayi—purraay there-CIRC-CNTR ASSERT far away be-PAST child-ABs nungkal —thirramakaankthi ‘you-oBt.P1 hill-cinc But your child was over there, a long way in the hills, (®) kuwayupu na yanaveanha along time-unty 3rd-aBs go-MOVING-PRES Heis still going, 2 (©) mukarri:paa na kurunhi porcupine grass-CIRC-ASSERT-3rd- ARS enter-PAST He went into the porcupine grass. (@) kurraar na nganaay far away 3rd-aps there-YONDER “He's away to blazes." - (©) palunhipa-vaama na die-PAST SUB-ALTER TOPIC 3rd-ABS ‘He might be dead,234 Tamsin Donaldson | have labelled cach sentence of the song words with a lower case letter, so that 1 can discuss portions of text by reference to their place in the transcription — as line (a), line (b), and so on, Each line is represented in three ways — at the top by a transcription of the Neiyampaa words, with a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss analysis beneath each word,? and at the bottom by a translation. into English. Ngiyampaa regularly allows more ellipsis than does English. Supplied material in translations is enclosed in paren. theses. Ngiyampaa speakers’ verbatim translations (distinguished by inverted commas) are sometimes paraphrases. Otherwise translations are as literal as possible. Two comments remain to be ‘made about the representation of this text. Firs, line (a) refers to ‘your child’, using the plural form of ‘your’. There are dual forms in Neiyampaa, so the use of the plural here means that the remark is not addressed to the boy's parents but to all the people involved in the search, Second, ‘He's away to blazes’ is Fred Biggs’s own ‘On @ more general point of presensation, it would appear that 1 have adopted a grammarian’s criterion (and a sometimes tricky one at that) — the sentence — for subdividing the transcription of the text into lines, In fact, what I have set out as lines do not always coincide with sentences, though the coincidence is frequent enough for me to have assumed it was constant in previous publication of Ngiyampaa song texts. When the words of a song are sung, the otherwise meaningless syllable nga is typically inserted between what I have distinguished as lines (though not before the first or after the last of a performance). If gays not audible between lines, then one can usually hear a short “eh” or sometimes a sharply in, drawn breath. My divisions into lines are made on the basis of hearing at least one performer sing nga between them, though not necessarily at every opportunity in every performance. | am at this stage quite unclear as to what sort of metrical or word-patterning constraints there may be on the internal structure of lines. Com. bined textual and musical notations for complete performances, with occurrences of nga indicated, would obviously be helpful, ines. Te will be noticed that as well as labelling lines with letters, | have divided them into two separate sections marked 1 and 2. The first section may be repeated with or without the second one following On. In other words, the singer may sing section 1 several times over, KIDSTHAT GOT Lost 235 Without proceeding to section 2. But if section 2 is sung, he or she Thus! either conclude the performance when it ends or return to the beginning of section 1. Section 2 must not be repeated end to end, |n Fred Biggs’s own performance of his song about the boy lost in the hills, the pattern of section repetition is as follows: 1, 21x 4, 2.1 x 4,2, 1 x 3. (A multiplication sign followed by a number Shows how often section 1 is repeated.) He finishes with a shout, 2aa!, which can be heard at the end of some performances of some Ses among these recordings, though the immediate resumption of conversation is more typical — perhaps as an artefact of the recording situation, Twenty-five years passed between Fred Biggs's invention of the song and his performance of it for Jeremy Beckett in 1957, By then performances of “the old songs” had long formed only a tiny Part of the community's music-making [Beckett 1958). It is Possible that the composer's own text could have undergone some. changes over this period. But two other recorded performances do use exactly the same words as his does. One is by John King (Plate 2), nicknamed Tap, recorded by Luise Hercus [1968 LA1064). He manors Jo her several times on tape that he is Fred Biggs’s Imusical heir. He puts it in terms like this: ‘He said to me, “When | £0, cous” — I was his own cousin, see — “well, you can have all that. 1'll give you them song; ngintu nginakalkaa wakaymalpivaka ‘neathu palunhaarra, you can sing them behind when I'm dead and gone!’ * [1969: LA1594/5]. His is the longest recorded performance of a Ngiyampaa song, lasting for just over fifteen minutes Even then, he brings it to an end only because the reel of tape is nearly finished. (The only other recording of comparable length was made 6n the same occasion — John King singing another song of Fred Biggs's about a postmaster anxious to search a mailbag for news of the First World War.) He repeats the sections of the song about the boy lost in the hills as follows: 1, 2,1 x 2,2, 1x 3,2, x 421 X 32,1 5,21 x 52,1 x 24,21 7,2,1% 42,1 x4,2,1 X42 x 4,21 721% 5,21 7,21 4,2, 1% S241 XS 21 421% 321% 3,2, 1 x 3,2, 1, finishing in confusion part way through line (a of the next repetition of 1 The ‘other performance which follows Fred Biggs's text exactly is Sarah, ‘Johnson's (1975: LA3899}. It is much shorter: 1, 2, 1 » 2, 2. It scems that deliberate variation of the text from singer to singer oF from performance to performance plays no part in the poeties of236 Tamsin Donaldson Dareton in 1971, aftera session recording ‘Jobn King (cight) by the river Murray at Coomes KIDSTHAT GOT LOST 237 this song tradition. However, its conventions of composition and performance would seem prima facie to favour certain specific kinds of unintentional textual serambling and loss. In the words of Fred Biggs’s song, as in those of other Ngiyampaa songs, there is no narrative structure to link the lines ina particular sequence. Nor is there any other form of semantic interdependence between these lines such that each needs any of the others in order to make sense. ‘They are not tightly linked by grammatical devices. The first line refers to the child who is lost, purraay: in every other line there is also reference to the boy, made by using the pronoun na. In this ‘way these lines are all established as dependent on line (a) for the interpretation of na. But that is all. The conventions of repetition in performance positively require that the last line of section 1 should be followed equally happily by the first of either section 1 or 2. Within sections the degree of semantic interrelation between lines is presumably up to the composer. Fred Biggs in this instance has chosen to emphasise the separateness of the observations about the lost boy's behaviour by varying the tense from present in line (©) to past in line (©). With a song style of this kind, one might expect lines to be inadvertently sung in a variety of orders or whole lines to be omitted. In addition, since first sections may be repeated more often than second sections in performance (up t0 a ratio of 24:1 by John King on the occasion already referred to), one might also expect the two sections to be differently affected by variation, especially omission, The way in which some of these expectations are fulfilled in other recordings, while others are not, tells us more ‘about Ngiyampaa song-making than could ever be learnt from studying a single performance of a song. At the same time it raises new questions (0) Types of omission Frank Johnson, in a performance of Fred Biggs’s song about the boy lost in the hills which I recorded in Wilcannia [1972: LA2811}, ‘omits line (d) from his second section in a performance whose pattern of repetition is 1, 2, 1, 2. Dougie Young, himselta notable composer of hillbilly songs in English [Beckett 1958, 1965], also sang this song for Jeremy Beckett [1964: LA626]. He omits two lines from section 2, line (c) and line (d), in @ performance with the repetition pattern 1, 1, line (a), line (@), 1, 1. These two per- formances draw attention to one particular problem involved in the i 4 i i =238 ‘Tamsin Donaldson appraisal of texts of Ngiyampaa songs which are derived from a small number of performances and especially from single per= formances. Frank Johnson’s reveals that repetition is a principle of performance; but since itis restricted to repetitions of the form 1, 2, it does not reveal the division of the text into two sections, Dougie Young's comes close to omitting section 2 altogether (the closest of any performance of this particular song). If the only known performances of a song either consist of a once-through. singing of the text or appear to involve repetitions only of the entire text, are we to regard their texts as divisible into two sections? Or are we to regard them as consisting of the first section only of the song as composed? On the evidence of songs whose division into sections is now known, there is no standard length appropriate for each section, at least in terms of lines In 1979 I had noticed that singers of Ngiyampaa songs ‘con- sistently repeat a song several times in succession’ but not the principle of differential repetition of sections [Donaldson 197 67]. I had been unable to spot the problem, because the perfor~ mances whose words I was transcribing Were all of this problemati- cal kind, This, too, like the absence of song-final shouts, may reflect the circumstances in which the recordings were made. Even when there was an appreciative audience consisting of many others besides myself, songs were being sung to demonstrate for the record what they ‘used to be’ like, as is made explicit in one singer's comment as she stopped singing: ‘That was a nice little song kalwaakiyi, you know"; kalwaakiyi means ‘used to be’ [Donaldson 1979: 67-68], With some of the songs that I had come across by 1979, the tape anthology itself solved this newly-discovered problem. The four- sentence song about crows, for instance, whose text is published as Fred Biggs’s [Donaldson 1980: 333], turned out in Fred Bigas’s ‘own performance to be divisible (1956: LA627]. It also turned out nnot to have been composed by Fred Biggs but by someone who spoke a different kind of Ngiyampaa, someone of Wayilwan descent from further north, regarded by the Ngiyampaa speakers whose language I have been recording as from a socially quite different (though linguistically quite intelligible) *mob" or ‘tribe? {personal communication, Archie King, who listened to Fred Biggs’s version of this song with me; confirmed by Beckett’s field notes, taken in the course of working with Biggs, which suggest KIDS THAT GOT LOST 239 that Billy Coleman of Cobar was the composer]. None of the differences which distinguish the two varieties of Ngiyampaa had shown up in the text, unless the difficulty noted in the third sen- tence should be attributed to dialectal variation. I digress to mention this now only because the other song, the problem of whose division into sections was solved by listening with Ngiyampaa speakers to the taped anthology, was also com- posed by a member of this ‘Wayilwan mob’. (I shall return to the {question of dialectal variation later.) The song concerned is the one already referred to as circulating in recited rather than sung form. Harold Hampton, himself from further north, brought it into the territory of Wangeaypuwan speakers of Neiyampaa when he married Lily Keewong. He had grown up basically speaking English but remembered the words of this little song as a sort of linguistic keepsake. This is how he used to recite it and how his in- laws learnt it (notice the unassimilated English which is made into something of a feature) Text I (a) kanyryapatu chit constable-rxo 2nd-ost. (b) put kurrimiyi ‘name-abs lay-Past (a.&b) The policeman put down my name. (©) warraay-paa ni bad-asseeT. 3rd-vis No He's no good. (@) wityu thu —kalaka how. Ist-Nom be-cM1RR ‘What will become of me? (©) Buggered if know. () Nogetaway pankaan degree adverb vs no get away’ alright!40 ‘Tamsin Donaldson His spoken version contained no insertions of nga, so I was not able to use that criterion for division into lines. The lines here are based on the assured phrasing with which it was recited and divided for dictation 10 me (lines (a) and (b) even rhyme). Nevertheless, it might seem that the piece is long enough to contain two sections for performance purposes. However, a recording made by Luise Hercus with Bert Hunter, an isolated speaker of Ngiyampaa of the Wayilwan variety who lived in Wileannia, reveals that what has been circulating as ‘Harold Hampton’s little song" is only section 1 of the original composition (1968: LA1590]. Bert Hunter's section 2, which is too incoherently articulated to be satisfactorily tran= ‘scribed, shows that the composer was Dickie Hull, that he is im- prisoned in Maitland Jail, and either that a certain woman should say goodbye to him or that the crime of which he is accused in- volved her or both. There was one song, however, the discovery of an earlier recording of which threw no light on the question of whether the published text represents one original section or two [Donaldson 1980; 335]. The Sound Archive of tit Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies contains songs recorded by John Gordon in various parts of New South Wales, including a performance in Lidcombe State Hospital by Peter Bourke of this three-sentence song based on an ironic comparison between food found in the bush and degenerate white people’s food (1967: LA1220}. Peter Bourke’s performance makes use of the same words and consists simply of singing them right through twice. (Conversation with ‘Archie King revealed that the published text for thi misattributed, Though Moolbong Johnson sang it, it was com- posed not by him but by a much older man, Jimmy Boney.) Will there turn out to be any diagnostic musical correlates for the jsion of song texts into sections? (c) Types of scrambling "Though there is clear evidence for the omission of lines and even sections in the transmission of Ngiyampaa songs, I have not come across any examples of lines being sung in different orders. Negative evidence does not count for much when working with ‘material of this sort, But it may be that musicologists will be able to find musical reasons for this, to0. I have not found scrambling of lines from within the same song. But I have found evidence of a , too, had been KIDSTHAT GOT LosT 2a tendency towards a different kind of scrambling — mixi and sections from what were composed as different songs. Fred Biggs's song about the boy lost in the hills is on a popular theme. A¢ least three small white children who were lost in the dry scrubs of Ngiyampaa country and found after days of wandering are readily reminisced about. It was before 1900 that one of them, a litte girl called Edie, got lost out from W Tree Station while minding goats. And it was a Ngiyampaa man, Red Tank Jackie, who found her, thereby acquiring such a reputation as a tracker that he was called in to search for the Governors — the “Breelong blacks’ whose story underlies Thomas Keneally’s novel, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (Sydney, 1972) — and was instrumental in their capture [Kennedy and Donaldson 1982]. 1 know of several Ngiyampaa songs about lost children, some of them described as ‘mates’ to one another, on the grounds of their being about the same episode, All of them also allude to tracking the child, except for one which is an exchange between a boy lost in the fog and his mother (1963: LAI91; see also Hercus 1969: 95], There is thus a likelihood of people remembering lines and sections of other songs which could aptly be confused with those of Fred Biggs’s. When Frank Johnson finishes the performance of Fred Biggs's song which has already been mentioned, he breaks into specch, explaining, ‘I'd say then: —', and straightaway sings another couple of lines, the first describing tyivarakirrpa ‘mob of shearers’ going this way and that and the last question beginning ‘wanhthaku-waa whitefellow . ..?” (where DAT-EXCLAM) ‘where towhitefellow . . .?”. It may be that Frank Johnson's ‘I'd say then: —' is intended to show that he’s starting a new song which is a ‘mate’ to the last rather than a continuation of it Gus Williams’ performance of this song for Luise Hercus (1967: LAI364] involves more obvious scrambling. It consists of Fred Biggs’s section 1, followed by four lines constituting a second section, which are quite different from Fred Biggs’s. His section 2 consists of three questions, the first translatable as ‘Where are they’”, the second as ‘Is he/she lost?", and the third beginning like Frank Johnson’s question, ‘wanhthaku-waa whitefellow . . .2° ‘The section ends with a line describing someone, presumably the lost child, reappearing out of the mukulmukulthaay (a word whose ‘meaning is unknown to those who listened with me to this recor- ding). There is then a slight pause, suggesting that Gus Williams ie lines242 ‘Tamsin Donaldson may have felt hesitant about this section 2, before he goes on to repeat section 1 and bring his performance to an end with Fred Biggs’s section 2. ‘A couple of other songs about lost children are of interest here. Fred Biggs made a companion piece to ‘Lost boy in the hills’ (my. title, for reference use only). AS Archie King explained to me: ‘Old Fred Biggs had only one eye, so no good of him going out, he couldn't see too good. So he’s saying, ‘*You feller can track that purraay, V'll stop back and look after the mother’”.’ The text is John King’s (1969: LA1595]: Text III 1 @) ngintwkal ni yapaa yay purraay nungkal 2nd-NOM-PL 3rd-Vis-Aastrack-iMP this. chili-ABS 2nd-O8L-PL Allof you go on and track this kid of yours. (b) ngathu nganaaylea — kumi” — nae Ist-NoM there-voNDeR EST mother-ABs 2nd-oo1, (©) kurrwalpikarraakirri nngini—yaay look after-BEHIND-ALL DAVARR here-Loc thus (b & ©) I'l stay behind all day and look after your mother over there 2 @ pukaayangkaay ngini kara ‘old person-NoM here-LOc be-PRES. It’s the old people here, (Line (@) is ambiguous. It could be understood as “(She)’s an ol woman, (this one) here.) ‘The other one, composer unknown, is about another boy, t son of a boundary rider on W Tree Station named Robertson. boy got lost there in the late 1920s and was tracked down ai “trotting along straight through to the next tank’. Again, itis one: ‘a pair of ‘mates*. This text is also John King’s [1969: LA1595]: KIDSTHAT GOT LOST Text IV 1) wanhihaku-waa —ngiyanuna —_karaanhthitaka purraay where-DAT-EXCLAM ISt-PL.NOMEXC look For-cMARk child-Aas, pantuku oor thing Where will we look for the poor litte fellow? (b) tharrinya —minkiyan—yapa—_tukungkal disappear-pxes degree adverb track-aas 3rd-GEN-PL ‘Their tracks are giving out altogether. 2 © nganoay —waary—winangaa there-YONDER crow-ABslisten-iMe Listen to the erows over theret (@)_ waarukirrpa kalangka-naarra crow-PaRty benoisy- cIRCUM "Might hear mob of erows talking.” (6) nginikalaa na kurrinya here-PL-LOC.EST 31d-ABs lie-PRES “That's where he might be laying, there.” (Another performance has luku ‘his’ instead of fukungkal ‘their’ in line (b). This is more intelligible unless the boy has a dog with him; but like so many other variations it changes the number of syllables intheline,) ‘The extraneous lines in Gus ‘Williams’ and Frank Johnson’s performances of ‘Lost boy in the hills” cannot be traced exactly to cither of these two songs (or to any other which has been recorded). But Frank Johnson’s reference to shearers is replicated in an un- confident attempt at a performance by Sarah Johnson — not of the same Johnson family (1975: LA3899]. Having sung ‘Lost boy in the hills’ a couple of minutes earlier, she sings a version of ‘Lost boy among the crows’, stopping in confusion at the beginning of line (e). Next come lines about a mob of shearers singing out to one2a ‘Tamsin Donaldson another in the malice (scrub formed by eucalypts), together with, {ine (a) of *Lost boy among the crows’ and a version of lines (b) and, (©) of ‘Looking afier lost boy's mother’ None of these performances which deducibly include parts of other songs is confident enough for their anomalies to be sustained. in repetitions. But, again, this negative evidence cannot be conclus- ive unless musicologists can find musical constraints on such scrambling which would force singers to realise that their memories are failing them, 3. Variation made Possible by Language Differences between Singers (a) Neivampaa speakers, Paakaniji speakers, and the impact of English The text of Frank Johnson’s performance of *Lost boy in the hills? varies from that of Fred Biggs’s in one more as yet un- discussed way. He drops the enclitic pafticle -pakaa from line (@) and the subordination marker -pa from line (e). These minor ‘grammatical simplifications which leave the general sense intact are ‘made by someone who does not have the composer's text verbatim but would understand its language perfectly well The wording of the last performance of this song to be examined here varies remarkably enough from Fred Biggs’s, especially in line (b), to require a separate transcription, despite the singer Willie Webster's prefatory remark that it was from Fred Biggs that he learnt the song [1971: LA2800]: Text V 1 (a) ngatyikurraarr kurraalkayi—purraayrungkal faraway be-past child-ass 2nd-ont ‘thirramakaangkss hill-osr your child was far away tothe hills. (©) yunganaa cxy-Pnes crying. KIDSTHAT GOT LOST (b) nawanaa B0-MOVING-PRES (He) is going alons, 2 (©) mukarri-paa na uruni porcupine grass-ciRC-ASsERT 3rd-Ans enter-PAst He went into the poreupine grass, (@) kurraayna——nganaa Srd-ans there hhe is) there. (©) paluai yeay mana die-pasrthus —3rd-ans Sohe . . . died. Willie Webster explains on the tape that the language of the song is, Wangaaypuwan and that itis about tracking down a little lost white boy. After singing it, he speaks the opening couple of words of the text and comments, ‘I just don’t know what that is’, He is of Paakantji descent himself, from the ‘river people’ along the Darling to the west of Wangaaypuwan country, with a very dif- ferent culture and language. But it is easier to exp! variation Of the text in terms of his being fundamentally an English speaker than as being due to the influence of Paakantji. ‘Some of the forms unique to his performance are homophonous, or partly so, with Paakantji words, but their meanings are con- textually inappropriate. For instance, yunga in line (ba) means ‘one's own’, while the singer himself rejects the Paakantji sense of ngatyi for line (a) — ‘rainbow serpent’ to anthropologists but ‘ngatji still to English-speaking Paakantji people.? He is not making the Neiyampaa words fit the Paakantji sound system; kurraal, which has no meaning in Ngiyampaa, ends in a consonant, while Paakantji words never do. The only systematic change from ‘Ngiyampaa pronunciation is his conversion of the lamino- interdental nh, a sound which occurs, though rarely, in Paakantj as well, to the familiar apical m of English in all tense-endings on verbs. Other features of his variation are consistent with experience246 ‘Tamsin Donaldson of hearing Ngiyampaa spoken. He makes the same omissions within lines as Frank Johnson. His version of line (b) is sung as two lines (using the criterion of separation by a sung nga). His line (by) ‘can be construed as yunganha ‘(he) is crying’ with line-final vowel lengthening — a common practice in Ngiyampaa singing which is not normally represented in my text transcriptions since they are strictly phonological — and his line (bp) as representing the verb Janawanha which ends Fred Biggs's line (b), ‘(he) is keeping on going along’. (Like melisma in other kinds of singing, the prolongation of vowels in performance can only properly be in- dicated in combination with musical notation.) Finally, the changed case-ending on the word for ‘hills’ is good Ngiyampaa (but not Paakantj) for altering the meaning to ‘to the hills’ — the line, however, now lacks a suitable verb of motion. ‘A little history isin order here. Until 1933 Ngiyampaa people had been institutionalised comparatively briefly and only in their own country at Carowra Tank. They were then shifted to live with Paakantii people on Paakantji territory at Menindee. Though one group of Ngiyampaa ‘brought in’ to Clrowra Tank had spoken “Paakantji as well as their own’, most of them died soon after the move to Menindee. This fresh institutionalisation put pressure on. people of both descents to abandon their own languages in favour of English. Members of each group felt the other’s language to be as hard as Italian or Chinese to get their tongues around (Berndt 1943: 19}. Though people who already spoke either language kept it up to a considerable extent among themselves, this singer's generation were not to learn either ‘right through’. ‘Such a lack of speaking knowledge does not necessarily prevent songs being learnt verbatim. Among the performances of Fred Biggs’s songs already discussed, there is one other by someone not raised as a Ngiyampaa speaker. Which? One may well ask. Itis the ‘one by Dougie Young, originally from Queensland. Bar the ‘omissions which have been pointed out, the text of his performance is exactly like the composer's. Vernacular competence is needed make songs in the tradition but not to perform them. However, tunless speakers of the language are a continuing audience, departures from verbatim transmission may take place without remark, let alone restraint. Before the impact of English, if songs of this kind were traded across major linguistic boundaries, did similar processes take place? Are they happening now in regions KIDS THAT GOT Lost 27 where similar secular occasional songs are still being made? The transmission of such songs from place to place as well as from ‘generation to generation deserves to be recorded. Both Willie Webster and Dougie Young sing with verve and assurance. Both performances uphold, each from a different perspective, a widespread and ancient Aboriginal approach to singing — an interest in learning songs without regard to one’s ability to construe their language, even with a positive pleasure in their linguistic obscurity, on the assumption that it is quite normal to ‘learn a song and its interpretation as two separate items’. (For various reasons why and for examples from South Australia and Amhem Land, see Donaldson (1979: 75-811.) (b) Approaches to dialectal differences We have just seen songs made in Ngiyampaa becoming part of the repertory of singers who don't speak the language. More ‘commonly among the tape-recordings the language background of ‘a ong’s later singers differs from that of its composer only in small dialectal vocabulary preferences. Singers in this position have the possibility either of reproducing the composer's exact words or of substituting their own equivalents. There are recorded examples of both happening. The Neiyampaa of the Wangaaypuwan people at Carowra Tank varied with respect to a few words between speakers born around Trida Station in the south and around Keewong Station in the north of their country. When Fred Biggs performs Billy Coleman's song about crows, he does not sing waakan (his, own ‘Trida mob’ form for ‘crow') but waaru (shared by the “Keewong mob’ and the Wayilwan people to whom Billy Coleman belonged). Sarah Johnson, also. from Trida, does the same [Donaldson 1980: 33]. When Sarah Johnson sings Fred Biggs’s own. song about an erotic dream [Donaldson 1980: 334], she uses yatharrmiyi for ‘dreamt’, a Trida form which Fred Biggs presumably used when he made the song and which also happens to be her own. But when Eliza Kennedy sings this song, she,uses her own Keewong form yarruthaamiyi [Donaldson 1979: 67). (6) Approaches to more radical linguistic differences Performance in this song tradition I have been calling “Neiyampaa’ has now been shown to transcend several kinds of aces oir See asin anas ‘Tamsin Donaldson linguistic boundary. Composition in it does so, too. In Moolbong Johnson, the second composer mentioned at the beginning of this essay, we meet a song-maker who contributed a great many songs. to the Ngiyampaa speakers’ repertory. But he did not grow up speaking Ngiyampaa himself. He was of Wiradjuri descent (Wirraathurray as Ngiyampaa speakers say) from the Lachlan River. Through living with the ‘Carowra Tank mob’, he eame, like a number of other people with different tribal affiliations who ‘moved 10 Carowra or were sent there, to speak Ngiyampaa. Unlike the Paakantji the Wiradjuri were culturally and linguistically close ‘0 the Ngiyampaa people at Carowra Tank, with a language getting on for as easily intelligible to them, given practice, as that of the Wayilwan to the north. There are no recordings of Moolbong ‘Johnson singing his own songs. In the records we have of them, the singers are Ngiyampaa speakers, often with some knowledge of Wiradjuri — as one of them put it, ‘They can’t trick me with that Wirraathurray’. The language of theit texts varies from being barely distinguishable from Ngiyampaa, to being impossible for surviving Neiyampaa speakers to construe in detail, Some are full of words they recognise as Wiradjuri but cannot always translate, If the language of a song differs substantially from that normally _ used by the singer, the substitution of the singer's own equivalents could Iead to something approaching full-scale translation. | know of no examples where more than the odd familiar word is sub. stituted for another less familiar. Whether singers understand the song texts they learn well or not, they leave them untranslated. Variations in Interpretation ‘The less a song's language is understood, the more prominent become accounts of what the song is about. At the same time, content of the text itself can exercise fewer constraints on terpretation. This is the process which ean be seen at work varying descriptions of what is intended by a much-recorded so of Moolbong Johnson's, whose text, as sung by John King [I LA1595}, divided into lines on the same basis as Text Il, is as follows: Text VI 1 @) yamakarra-paay ‘well-assenr KIDSTHAT GOT LosT 9 (b) alingku ngityivi water-ERG rain: Past (@& b) Well, soitrained? wangaaypu-paaia NEG-UNIV-ASSERT Definitely not yet yatang-kilaa lu well:lyPori 31d-ex6 (D thought he (said so) for sure wirringantu ——ngini—_ngiyalnganhi kampirra lever person-ERG here-L0C say-CM-AFTERNOON PAST tomorrow ‘The clever man said (yesterday) afternoon, “(It'll be) here tomorrow’, wanhthuka-pakaa — wankihuka-pakaa later On-CNTR ASSERT Tater On-CNTR ASSERT But later on, but later on, kapataa pilangaata-than maa moon next-LOCLING EVID make-iMP ‘The words were ‘next month, make (rain), nging tharrivaka ——_ngikulaa this-aasdisappear-cMtine here-DAT-EST “When this moon goes out" *. This is a difficult song for today’s, Ngiyampaa speakers to construe. Though the particles -paay and -paala are the offly forms ‘ot regularly used in their Ngiyampaa, the syntax is challenging. ‘Those I have spoken to seem to agree that lines (a) and (b) — which hhave to be taken together — mean something like ‘I wonder if it’s ever going to rain’, but the verb ‘rain’ is in the past tense. Line (2) contains the only example I know of the particle -than (which250 ‘Tamsin Donaldson indicates that there is spoken evidence for what is being said) oc- curring in the same sentence as an imperative. No one is sure how should be understood. The last word of the last line is similarly a mystery — why ‘to here’ in this context? At the same time, as with so many of these songs, remarks made by different people seem to bbe quoted. The pattern of turn-taking is not clear. Who is needling whom? Whose face is saved? If you are in the know, you have an opportunity to savour the delicacy of the re-creation of the oc« casion, If you are not, you need to construct an interpretation of theevent, ‘Many incidents which gave rise fo Songs were quite public and SO are widely recalled. As John King said, ‘Old Moolbong and old Fred, well, you might be sitting down here, you might do something wrong, they'd make a song out of you straight away? (1969; LA1595]. Once at Menindee a fight between two people provoked a song from Fred Biggs whose words Archie King translated as: 1 Twonder what they’re doing over there to one another My people. ‘They're fighting one another over there. 2 Why don’t youse all drink in peace? Don’t go off your heads, havea good fun! On hearing John King’s performance of it (1969: LA1S95), listeners? first reaction was often to name the participants in the ni makangka kapataa pilangaala malkali, yurru mamali', explains to her as meaning, ‘wait tll this moon’s die and we'll get Manny Johnson recognises the word wirringan, explaining ‘he’s doctor fellow’, and so does the singer. The latter interprets the so as “The strong man has told me the stars read as it’s going to KIDS THAT GOT Lost 251 For his companion the healing role of the ‘clever man* comes uppermost, leading to the interpretation: “That's a sick kid, he’s in bed and the parents singing 10 it, and saying, “It won’t be long, the doctor'll be here soon.” Had they heard accounts as slender as John King’s when they learned this song? Something else about John King's introduction puzzled me: ‘ngani li ni makangka Kapataa pilangaata matkali, yurru mamali could be translated more precisely as “you and I will have to make it next month, (we'll) have to get rain’. I asked Archie King who the ‘you and 1" from Moolbong Johnson. Moolbong Johnson, who himself had a reputation for being wirringan ‘clever’, met a ‘white fellow from_ Condobolin, used to forecast the rain” and asked him when it was going to come. It was a time of drought, this man had forecast rain, but it hadn't materialised. So the wirringan of this song's line (e) is after all a white professional, not one of the old Ngiyampaa ‘clever men’ of rain-makers, But he is not a medical doctor as in the commonest extension of the term to fit modern life, And the song is a piece of banter founded on the opposition of rival claims to authoritative inside knowledge about rainfall ‘What would appear, on the basis of their varying interpretations, to be performances of a number of different songs turned out, once the performances themselves were compared, to be of the same song. Conversely, the many performances most generally deseribed as being about ‘tracking down that kid that got lost” turned out to represent at least four different songs. Acknowledgments ‘This work was made possible by a grant from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Only part of my debt to some of those mentioned the essay by name will be obvious. Many people listened to the taped performances; Eliza Kennedy, Archie King, Mamie King, and Lizzie Williams also spent long hours working closely through them with me Dot Probert recalled the goanna/Litile Brown Jug song. Jeremy Beckett made his field notes available, and he and Luise Hercus (who first in- troduced me to the Ngiyampaa) provided essential comments on drafts, ‘The tape anthology project would have been virtually impossible had Grace Koch not completed her timed cataloguing for the Australian In- stitute of Aboriginal Studies’ archival holdings in taped music for New South Wales. Performances, often lasting only a few seconds, had to be located within hour-long tapes and distinguished from others, sometimes ht be. He turned out to have heard the story directly}282 ‘Tamsin Donaldson of the same song by the same person on the same tape. The cataloguing system, in its computer-ready form, is largely the work of Alice M. Moyle. Notes 1, Both names may be used for either the people or the language. Another group. futher north are of Wayilwan descent, Tey use both this name and Natyampaa (pronouncing it slighty differenly) for ether themselves or their language, 'Neiyampaa’ in this essay refers to people of Wangaaypuwan descent or their language, unless the context makes it clear that the Wayllwan variety of Nelvampaa is involved [Donaldson 1980: 110), 2, For writing Naivampaa (both varieties) I have used the practical othoeraphy ‘opted by the community of Wangaaypuwan descent for the educational ‘materials s devsloping (pronunciation detalsin Johnson eral 1982). The uppet Cave glosses for grammatical morphemes can be used 10 find explanatory ‘discussion a Donaldson [1980]. Abbreviated glosses follow in full psolutve case Atttgnative Tonic marker particle “as ion” particle verb infection xenon" particle “exclusive of addressee” ‘HyFOTHesis' particle snarerative verb infection ‘axealis verb inflection | ‘incuisicesibence particle secative partite osLiquecase ‘rural Present cense| Suordinator usiversal quantifier Istperson 2nd person 3rd person, 13. Puakanit is written inthe practical orthography used for educational materia Jn which 1 is equivalent toy in Naiyampaa, Its also arguable that Fred Bigas pronunciation of neahi sounds more ike mga. References References beginning LA are (0 tape numbers in the Sound Archive of ‘Austraian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. References to timings within tapes jnchadd in a copy ofthis essay deposited in the Institute's Library, Canberra, Beckett, 5 1938 Aborigines Make Musi, Quadrant 832-42. 1965 ‘The Land Where the Crow fies Backwards, Quadrant 36: 38-43, KIDS THAT GOT Lost 283 Bernat, RM. and C, Bent TBA Shore Saar of Acculturation at Menindee Gi bor inde Government Aboriginal Staion, Daring River. unpublished Ispeseri, Ekin Calesion, Unvety ‘of Sydney, Sydney. : 1967 Woraderi Magicand “Clever Men”, Oceania 17: 327. Donaldson, T. ea 197 Translating Ora Licature:Aborighal Sone Tex, Abril History 3 1980 Neiyembar he Laneuase of ihe Waneaaybunan, Cambri Hercus, L.A, af s a 1968" The Languages of Victoria: Late Surves, Canberra Kennedy, and Donaldson 1942 Coming up out ofthe mhaub Reminiscences ofthe Life of Era Ken Aboriginal History 6; 5-28. seas Jonason,D. eral 1982 Neivompau Alphabet, Dubbo,