The Stranger's Friend
By Henry Lawson
The strangest things and the maddest things, that a man can do or say,
To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day;
Maybe on account of the lives they lead, or the life that their hearts discard,
But never a fool can be too mad or a hard case be too hard.
I met him in Bourke in the Union days, with which we have nought to do
(Their creed was narrow, their methods crude, but they stuck to the cause like glue).
He came into town from the Lost Soul Run for his grim half-yearly bend,
And because of a curious hobby he had, he was known as The Strangers Friend.
It is true to the region of adjectives when I say that the spree was grim,
For to go on the spree was a sacred rite, or a heathen rite, to him,
To shout for the travellers passing through to the land where the lost soul bakes,
Till they all seemed devils of different breeds, and his pockets were filled with snakes.
In the joyful mood, in the solemn mood, in his cynical stages too,
In the maudlin stage, in the fighting stage, in the stage when all was blue,
From the joyful hour when his spree commenced, right through to the awful end,
He never lost grip of his fixed idee that he was the Strangers Friend.
The feller as knows, he can battle around for his bloomin self, hed say,
I dont give a curse for the blanks I know the hard-up bloke this way;
Send the stranger round, and Ill see him through, and, een as the bushman spoke,
The chaps and fellers would tip the wink to a casual, hard-up bloke.
And it wasnt only a bushmans bluff to the fame of the Friend they scored,
For hed shout the stranger a suit of clothes, and hed pay for the strangers board,
The worst of it was that hed skite all night on the edge of the strangers bunk,
And never got helplessly drunk himself till hed got the stranger drunk.
And the chaps and the fellers would speculate, by way of a ghastly joke,
As to whod be caught by the jim-jams first, the Friend or the hard-up bloke?
And the Joker would say that there wasnt a doubt as to whod be damned in the end,
When the Devil got hold of a hard-up bloke in the shape of the Strangers Friend.
It mattered not to the Strangers Friend what the rest might say or think,
He always held that the hard-up state was due to the curse of drink,
To the evils of cards, and of company: But a young coves built that way,
And I was a bloomin fool meself when I started out, hed say.
At the end of the spree, in clean white moles, clean-shaven, and cool as ice,
Hed give the stranger a bob or two, and some straight Out Back advice;
Then hed tramp away for the Lost Soul Run, where the hot dust rose like smoke,
Having done his duty to all mankind, for hed stuck to a hard-up bloke.
Theyll say tis a song of a sot, perhaps, but the Song of a Sot is true.
I have battled myself, and you know, you chaps, what a man in the bush goes through:
Let us hope when the last of his sprees is past, and his cheques and his strength are done,
That, amongst the sober and thrifty mates, the Strangers Friend has one.