Mitchell Doesn't Believe In The Sack

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Title:     Mitchell Doesn't Believe In The Sack
Author: Henry Lawson [More Titles by Lawson]

"If ever I do get a job again," said Mitchell, "I'll stick to it while there's a hand's turn of work to do, and put a few pounds together. I won't be the fool I always was. If I'd had sense a couple of years ago, I wouldn't be tramping through this damned sand and mulga now. I'll get a job on a station, or at some toff's house, knocking about the stables and garden, and I'll make up my mind to settle down to graft for four or five years."

"But supposing you git the sack?" said his mate.

"I won't take it. Only for taking the sack I wouldn't be hard up to-day. The boss might come round and say:

'I won't want you after this week, Mitchell. I haven't got any more work for you to do. Come up and see me at the office presently.'

"So I'll go up and get my money; but I'll be pottering round as usual on Monday, and come up to the kitchen for my breakfast. Some time in the day the boss'll be knocking round and see me.

"'Why, Mitchell,' he'll say, 'I thought you was gone.'

"'I didn't say I was going,' I'll say. 'Who told you that--or what made you think so?'

"'I thought I told you on Saturday that I wouldn't want you any more,' he'll say, a bit short. 'I haven't got enough work to keep a man going; I told you that; I thought you understood. _Didn't I give you the sack on Saturday_?'

"'It's no use;' I'll say, 'that sort of thing's played out. I've been had too often that way; I've been sacked once too often. Taking the sack's been the cause of all my trouble; I don't believe in it. If I'd never taken the sack I'd have been a rich man to-day; it might be all very well for horses, but it doesn't suit me; it doesn't hurt you, but it hurts me. I made up my mind that when I got a place to suit me, I'd stick in it. I'm comfortable here and satisfied, and you've had no cause to find fault with me. It's no use you trying to sack me, because I won't take it. I've been there before, and you might as well try to catch an old bird with chaff.'

"'Well, I won't pay you, and you'd better be off,' he'll say, trying not to grin.

"'Never mind the money,' I'll say, 'the bit of tucker won't cost you anything, and I'll find something to do round the house till you have some more work. I won't ask you for anything, and, surely to God I'll find enough to do to pay for my grub!'

"So I'll potter round and take things easy and call up at the kitchen as usual at meal times, and by and by the boss'll think to himself: 'Well, if I've got to feed this chap I might as well get some work out of him.'

"So he'll find me, something regular to do--a bit of fencing, or carpentering, or painting, or something, and then I'll begin to call up for my stuff again, as usual."

 

[THE END]

Notes on Australianisms

Based on my own speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson's stories, and carry overtones.

bagman: commercial traveller

Bananaland: Queensland

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch (a bend in a river cut off by a new channel, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.

billy: quintessentially Australian. It is like (or may even be made out of) a medium-sized can, with wire handles and a lid. Used to boil water. If for tea, the leaves are added into the billy itself; the billy may be swung ('to make the leaves settle') or a eucalyptus twig place across the top, more ritual than pragmatic. These stories are supposedly told while the billy is suspended over the fire at night, at the end of a tramp. (Also used in want of other things, for cooking)

blackfellow (also, blackman): condescending for Australian Aboriginal

blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers' strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab.

blanky or --- : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for "bloody"

blucher: a kind of half-boot (named after Austrian general)

blued: of a wages cheque: all spent extravagantly--and rapidly.

bluey: swag. Supposedly because blankets were mostly blue (so Lawson)

boggabri: never heard of it. It is a town in NSW: the dictionaries seem to suggest that it is a plant, which fits context. What then is a 'tater-marrer' (potato-marrow?). Any help?

bowyangs: ties (cord, rope, cloth) put around trouser legs below knee

bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed.

bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions ('mulga' and 'mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest.

bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires. bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy")

bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the 'bush'-- scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned Kelly--but usually very violent.

cheque: wages for a full season of sheep-shearing; meant to last until the next year, including a family, but often "blued' in a 'spree'

chyack: (chy-ike) like chaffing; to tease, mildly abuse

cocky: a farmer, esp. dairy farmers (='cow-cockies')

cubby-house: or cubby. Children's playhouse ("Wendy house" is commercial form))

Darlinghurst: Sydney suburb--where the gaol was in those days

dead marine: empty beer bottle

dossing: sleeping rough or poorly (as in a "doss-house")

doughboy: kind of dumpling

drover: one who "droves" cattle or sheep.

droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.

drown the miller: to add too much water to flour when cooking. Used metaphorically in story.

fossick: pick over areas for gold. Not mining as such.

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown.

half-sov.: a coin worth half a pound (sovereign)

Gladesville: Sydney suburb--site of mental hospital.

goanna: various kinds of monitor lizards. Can be quite a size.

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney

humpy: originally an aboriginal shelter (=gunyah); extended to a settler's hut

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch")

jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: "where's that jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag".

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang ("push"). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The _Bulletin_, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the "aggressive, soft-hatted "stoush brigade". Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character.

larrikiness: jocular feminine form

leather-jacket: kind of pancake (more often a fish, these days)

lucerne: cattle feed-a leguminous plant, alfalfa in US

lumper: labourer; esp. on wharves?

mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket.

Maoriland: Lawson's name for New Zealand

marine, dead: see dead

mooching: wandering idly, not going anywhere in particular

mug: gullible person, a con-man's 'mark' (potential victim)

mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region.

mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock

myall: aboriginal living in a traditional--pre-conquest--manner

narked: annoyed

navvies: labourers (especially making roads, railways; originally canals, thus from 'navigators')

nobbler: a drink

nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled

pannikin: metal mug

peckish: hungry--usually only mildly so. Use here is thus ironic.

poley: a dehorned cow

poddy-(calf): a calf separated from its mother but still needing milk

rouseabout: labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed. Considered to be, as far as any work is, unskilled labour.

sawney: silly, gormless

selector: small farmer who under the "Selection Act (Alienation of Land Act", Sydney 1862 could settle on a few acres of land and farm it, with hope of buying it. As the land had been leased by "squatters" to run sheep, they were NOT popular. The land was usually pretty poor, and there was little transport to get food to market, many, many failed. (The same mistake was made after WWI-- returned soldiers were given land to starve on.)

shanty: besides common meaning of shack it refers to an unofficial (and illegal) grog-shop; in contrast to the legal 'pub'.

spieler; con artist

sliprails: in lieu of a gate, the rails of a fence may be loosely socketed into posts, so that they may 'let down' (i.e. one end pushed in socket, the other end resting on the ground). See 'A Day on a Selection'

spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks.

stoush: a fight,

strike: the perhaps the Shearers' strike in Barcaldine, Queensland, 1891 gjc]

sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a "handout". Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for "tea" i.e. the evening meal. In view of the Great Depression of the time, these expressions of attitude are probably unfair, but the attitudes are common enough even today.

Surry Hills: Sydney inner suburb (where I live)

swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag" in Children of the Bush, also a PG Etext) Lawson also restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for "handouts". See 'travellers'.

'swelp: mild oath of affirmation ="so help me [God]"

travellers: "shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work" (Lawson).

whare: small Maori house--is it used here for European equivalent? Help anyone?

whipping the cat: drunk

[The end]
Henry Lawson's short story: Mitchell Doesn't Believe In The Sack

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