Click Go the Shears

The story

"Click Go the Shears" is a traditional Australian song about a day's work for a sheep shearer in the days before machine shearing. Its lasting popularity reflects the long place of the wool industry in Australian life.

In June 2013 the folklorist Mark Gregory found that a version was first published in 1891 in a regional Victorian newspaper, the Bacchus Marsh Express, under the title "The Bare Belled Ewe", to be sung to the tune of "Ring the Bell, Watchman". It was signed "C. C. Eynesbury, Nov. 20, 1891"; Eynesbury was a rural property in the Bacchus Marsh area, and "C.C." may have been the author. There was a shearers' strike in 1891, so the song would have resonated with Australians when it appeared. The tune is that of the American Civil War song "Ring the Bell, Watchman" by Henry Clay Work, and the first verse follows Work's words closely, as a parody.

The song was next printed in 1939 in two Australian newspapers, and in 1946 the musicologist the Reverend Dr Percy Jones published it as a traditional song he had "collected and arranged". It became popular only in the 1950s, more than half a century after it first appeared. Its words vary widely from version to version, and one coarse line is often softened or rewritten.

The American folk singer Burl Ives recorded it in 1952 for his album Australian Folk Songs, the British folklorist A. L. Lloyd in 1956 and the American singer William Clauson in 1958. When Australia replaced the pound with the dollar in 1966, a jingle for the changeover was written to its tune. In 1973, when Prime Minister Gough Whitlam visited the People's Republic of China, it was played through loudspeakers along his motorcade's route from Peking International Airport to his hotel. Olivia Newton-John sang it in her television special Olivia Down Under in 1988, and in January 2014 Chloe and Jason Roweth sang the 1891 version for an ABC TV story.

What it says

A picture of work in a shearing shed: the shearers at their pace, the man in charge of the floor, a newcomer learning the trade, and a boy who tends the sheep's cuts. At the end of the day an old shearer takes his pay to the pub. The mood is brisk and good-humoured.

The words