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Thomas Bracken

A prolific writer, Thomas Bracken’s one permanent poetic monument is the stirring prose that became New Zealand’s national anthem.

Bracken, an Irish-born orphan, is believed to have arrived in Dunedin in early 1869 where he soon began a journalistic career. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s Bracken founded, owned, and edited several newspapers. He also wrote poetry prolifically throughout the period, publishing a number of books in New Zealand, Australia and England.

Bracken’s single most important literary achievement was his poem ‘God defend New Zealand’. On 1 July 1876 his newspaper the New Zealand Saturday Advertiser published the five stanzas under the title ‘National hymn’. A score written by John Joseph Woods, a teacher from Lawrence in Otago, was chosen as the air to accompany the poem. The first presentation of the poem with its music was on Christmas night 1876, at a concert in Dunedin’s Queen's Theatre by the Lydia Howarde troupe.

‘God defend New Zealand’ rapidly gained popular recognition. Premier Richard Seddon even presented a copy to Queen Victoria at her diamond jubilee. However, having relinquished the copyright of the poem to Woods, Bracken was unable to recover from financial difficulties and died penniless in 1898.

The National Centennial Council recommended in December 1938 that the government adopt ‘God defend New Zealand’ as the national hymn. In 1940 the government purchased of the rights to Bracken's words and Woods's music, and the work was given equal status with ‘God save the Queen’ as a national anthem in 1977.

By W.S. Broughton; adapted by Matthew Tonks

See full biography of Thomas Bracken (DNZB)

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Thomas Bracken

A prolific writer, Thomas Bracken’s one permanent poetic monument is the stirring prose that became New Zealand’s national anthem, 'God Defend New Zealand.'

Read biography of Thomas Bracken

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-4920-3-09-01
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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poetry

songs

anthem

thomas bracken

national anthem

'Sticky Beak the kiwi' song

Hear 'Sticky Beak the kiwi' performed by staff at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Click on the arrow to play or download as a podcast (mp3, 3.2mb) - right click on link and choose 'Save target as' or 'Save link as' to save to your computer.

Kiwi Christmas songs

Many traditional Christmas songs have been adapted for a New Zealand audience and conditions. In 1981 Kingi Ihaka wrote 'A pukeko in a ponga tree', a version of the popular song 'The twelve days of Christmas'. The Kiwi version has become a firm favourite in schools and often appears on New Zealand Christmas song compilations. Some hymns, such as 'Marie te po' ('Silent night'), have been translated into Maori to give them a New Zealand flavour.

One of the most popular New Zealand Christmas songs of the 1960s was 'Sticky Beak the kiwi', recorded by Kiwi Records. Gisborne songwriter and folk singer Bob Edwards wrote the words in the hope of producing a Christmas song especially for New Zealand children. Another local, Neil Roberts, set the words to music. Fourteen year old Gisborne schoolgirl Julie Nelson was selected to be the vocalist and recorded the hit song in 1961. She was backed by local group the Satins and the Whanganui dance band, the Don Bell Orchestra. The version available on this site was produced by staff at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in 2007.

The lyrics read like a manifesto of workers’ rights. The Aotearoa branch of the Santa Claus Distribution Union made it perfectly clear who was in charge once the sleigh arrived in this part of the world.

Now Sticky Beak the kiwi, that bird from way down under
He's caused a great commotion and it isn't any wonder
He's notified old Santa Claus to notify the deer
That he will pull the Christmas sleigh in the southern hemisphere.

Chorus:
Lots of toys for girls and boys load the Christmas sleigh
He will take the starlight trail along the Milky Way.
Hear the laughing children as they shout aloud with glee:
'Sticky Beak, Sticky Beak, be sure to call on me.'

Now every little kiwi, and every kangaroo, too,
The wallaby, the weka, and the platypus and emu,
Have made themselves a Christmas tree with stars and shining bright,
So Sticky Beak will see the way to guide the sleigh tonight.

Now Sticky Beak the kiwi, that Maori-land dictator,
Will not allow Rudolph's nose this side of the equator
So when you hear the sleigh bells ring you'll know that he's the boss,
And Sticky Beak will pull the sleigh beneath the Southern Cross.

See also the New Zealand folksong website.

Ministry for Culture and Heritage choir

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My old man's an All Black

Cover of the 45 rpm record, ‘On the rugged rugby-playing trail’.

‘On the rugged rugby-playing trail’/ ‘My old man’s an All Black’: the 1960 All Black rugby tour to South Africa

Sporting ties with South Africa during the apartheid years became a source of great debate and division in New Zealand society. The mass protests and civil unrest of the 1981 Springbok rugby tour are seen as the pinnacle of this debate. But protest against playing South African teams began as early as 1960, when the All Blacks bowed to the race laws of the republic and selected a touring team with no Māori players.

Kiwi Records released a 45 to mark the tour. On one side was ‘On the rugged rugby-playing trail’, sung by the Rugbymen with the Half-timers, under the musical direction of Ken Avery. ‘What is a rugby supporter?’ was on the flip-side. A parody written by Alwyn Owen, ‘On the rugged rugby-playing trail’ was narrated by John Pike:

We’re on the rugged, rugby-playing trail,
Where only sheer determination will prevail,
Touring All Blacks with a job to do –
Win the Tests and beat the Transvaal, too.
Although we kick and push and tackle till we burst,
Keep on the run to see we get there first,
We’re the boys from Enzed who will never fail
On the rugged, rugby-playing trail.

Other musicians were aware that not all of ‘the boys from Enzed’ were involved. Gerry Merito, a member of the popular all-Māori Howard Morrison Quartet, wrote ‘My old man’s an All Black’. Described as a ‘bitter-sweet parody’ of Lonnie Donegan’s ‘My old man's a dustman’, Merito’s composition used humour to make its point about the decision to tour without Māori.

The song was recorded in the Pukekohe Town Hall. The hall doors were locked to prevent the audience leaving during recording. By 1 a.m. the producer was satisfied and the increasingly restless townsfolk were able to go home. The recording included a number of comic asides that gained laughs while making a point:

Oh, my old man’s an All Black,
He wears the silver fern,
But his mates just couldn’t take him
So he’s out now for a turn.

(Fi Fi Fo Fum, there’s no Horis in this scrum.)

Well the All Black team is leaving
And the best of luck to them
And if they find things tricky
They’ll have to play like men
Cos the Springboks will be watching from Transvaal to Cape Town
That team that ain’t got Horis
To score their last touch down.

The song was a great hit, selling an estimated 60,000 copies. The Howard Morrison Quartet was not a group that middle New Zealand would find threatening. Despite the sentiment of ‘My old man’s an All Black’, it is debatable whether the song’s success was a mark of protest.

Hear an extract from ‘My old man’s an All Black’ (NZ Folk Song site)

Credit:

Steve Watters collection

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Railway songs

Taumarunui Railway Station in the early 20th century

'Taumarunui on the main trunk line'

New Zealand is not famous for its railway songs and has produced little to compare with American folk classics such as ‘I’ve been working on the railroad’, ‘This train (is bound for glory)’ or ‘The Wabash cannonball’. But few New Zealand folk songs are as iconic as Peter Cape’s ‘Taumarunui (on the main trunk line)’, a tale of unrequited love between ‘an ordinary joker’ and a ‘sheila’ who works behind the counter at the town’s famous railway refreshment room:

You got cinders in your whiskers and a cinder in your eye
So you hop off to Refreshments for a cupper tea and pie
Taumarunui, Taumarunui
Taumarunui on the main trunk line.

The romance and utility of railways has inspired a number of other home-grown folk songs. Cape also wrote ‘The Okaihau Express’, which celebrates an obscure Northland railway. The ‘smallest train you’ve ever seen’, consisting of an ‘engine and a guard’s van with a carriage in between,’ this ‘Express’ carries everything from ‘puppies in an apple box’ to ‘pipis in a sack’. ‘The Fairlie flyer’ by Bill Timmins also recalls the long-lost heyday of the rural branch line:

So firemen stoke the engine, steam down that railway track,
This train that’s leaving Fairlie is never, never coming back.

Rod Derrett’s ‘Kiwi train’ and Barry Lineham’s ‘Wellington Express’ each evoke the infamous ‘battle for a little tea and supper’ at refreshment rooms. The latter song employs a jumble of battlefield and rugby metaphors:

Ten minutes for refreshments is the signal for the rush
As the famished hordes exterminate the feeble in the crush
No battlefield is grimmer, where battered heroes die than the bloody
Railway battle for a cupper and a pie.
In a scrum All Blacks would envy
Only hardy souls remain
To grab a bun and sandwich is the saviour of the train.

Links

Credit:

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference:1/2-C-023287-F

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Sea shanties

The New Zealand topsail schooner Shepherdess sails in Cook Strait about 1870.

Songs of the sea

Ahoy there! Sea shanties, work songs sung on board sailing ships, were a feature of seafaring life in the 19th century. Although most shanties were of British or American origin, some had a distinctly New Zealand flavour.

Sea shanties were work songs or chants sung by the crew of sailing ships to help co-ordinate their efforts as they hauled on the halyards or tramped around the capstan to raise the anchor. In the 19th century shanties were commonly heard aboard vessels sailing to and from New Zealand and around the coast. Although most well-known shanties, such as ‘Rolling home’, ‘Drunken sailor’, ‘Homeward bound’, ‘Shenandoah’, ‘The Rio Grande’ and ‘Maggie May’, were British or American in origin, their words were frequently adapted to include local places, people and stories.

In the early 20th century the historian James Cowan collected several shanties with a New Zealand flavour, including ‘I’ve traded with the Maoris’, which was an adaptation of the British capstan shanty ‘The sailor’s way’:

I’ve traded with the Maoris
Brazilians and Chinese
I’ve courted half-caste beauties
Beneath the kauri trees;
I’ve travelled along, with a laugh and a song,
In the land where they call you mate
Around the Horn and home again,
For that is the sailor’s fate.

Across the Line, the Gulf Stream,
I’ve been to Table Bay,
Around the Horn and home again
For that is the sailor’s way.

Cowan also heard a local version of the popular halyard shanty ‘A long time ago’ (or ‘A hundred years ago’), which begins with the following verse:

Oh, I wish I was in Auckland town,
Away oh, aye oh!
Where all the girls walked up and down
A long time ago!

Links

Sea shanties and songs of the sea on the New Zealand folk song website
Listen to ‘I’ve traded with the Maoris’ on Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

Credit:

Image:
Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand
Reference: C-105-001
Artist: Forster, William James, 1851–1891
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its Timeframes website,
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any reuse of this image.

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Song: Boys of the Southern Cross

Boys of the Southern Cross was a popular song sung by New Zealand soldiers during the South African War.

Lyrics

We've heard about your trouble, Tom,
In rousting out the Boer;
You shall not fight out there alone
Amid the cannon's roar,
The blood that stirred our noble sires
To build up England's Fame,
Re-kindles in Colonial sons
Their prestige to maintain. For-

We are the boys of the Southern Cross
Our stars shine on our flags-
Emblazoned with the Union Jack,
To show we're Empire lads.

From storm-torn hills where tussocks wave,
And dells where tree-ferns grow;
From snow-capp'd peaks, and rock-bound coast,
We come,-to strike the blow.
Rest, British sons, till South-cross boys
Canadian brothers meet-
Then on we'll press, an Empire's strength,
And make the foe retreat. For-

Chorus

If seditious traitors cross our path
And parley for the Vaal,
We'll hang them up at Kruger's-dorp-
Thus settle matters well.
We'll gather now the camp fire round,
And make the billy sing;
Be ready, boys, at bugle's call
To fight for stars and Queen. For-

Chorus

With three cheers for the Empire loud;
And for the Queen,-Hurray!
We'll stick tight in our saddles, boys,
To drive the foe away;
When once again our land shall loom
And Kruger is no more,
Welcome we our native home-
And fair New Zealand's shore. For-

Chorus

Performed by Nigel Williams (voice) and Shirley Williams (piano)
Image: Alexander Turnbull Library, A-256-002

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Song: Sons of the Colonies

Sons of the Colonies composed by W. E. Whiteley.

Lyrics

England in danger!
Ominous words are these,
Roll they like thunder,
Flash'd o'er both land and seas.
Brave hearts in thousands,
Rise as with magic spell,
Ready for sacrifice, or Britain's dispel.
Sons of the Colonies,
Loyal to motherland,
Show Britain's enemies
We're one united band,
Rulers of Colonies,
Stand by your guiding star;
Forget not "twas old England
That made us what we are.

Sons of the Colonies,
Haste, haste, make ready.
"England in danger!"
Think what that might mean.
Let this be our battle cry,
"Colonials will do, or die,"
Whenever danger threatens
Our Empire and our Queen.

England in danger!
Think what that means to us.
Home of our fathers,
What foe thy path dare cross?
Regulars and volunteers
Ever your strength increase,
Raise more contingents still,
Ready to cross the seas.
Sons that have gone before
Show that the bulldog grit
Foes used to dread of yore,
Still in our blood runs fit.
Rulers of Colonies,
Staunch prove in time of war;
Remember we've old England
To thank for what we are.

Chorus

England in danger!
Let our generation
Grasp opportunity
Speed on federation;
Welded in unity, then let our foes beware -
As one community,
We will Britain's danger share.
Sons of the Colonies, parents and maidens too,
Rulers and Ministers, all that are loyal, true,
Raise as with one accord
Voices both near and far.
Unite in cheers for England,
That made us what we are -
For our Queen, hip, hip hip,
For our Empire, hip, hip, hip,
For old England, hip, hip, hip,

Chorus

Performed by Shirley Williams (voice) and Nigel Williams (piano)
Image: Alexander Turnbull Library, A-256-002

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Song: The Boers Have Got My Daddy

The Boers Have Got My Daddy composed by Mills and Castling and originally sung by Tom Costello.

Lyrics

This morning in a busy street,
A tiny lad I spied,
With paper hat, and little wooden
Sword slung by his side;
Said I, 'Good morning, Gen'ral!'
In a playful sort of way,
'I see by your appearance you're
Preparing for the fray.'
He stood up to attention,
Looked at me with flashing eye,
Then gripped his little wooden sword
As he made this reply -

The Boers have got my daddy
My soldier Dad;
I don't like to hear my Mammy sigh,
I don't like to see my Mammy cry;
So I'm going in a big ship
Across the raging main,
And I'm going to fight the Boers, I am,
And bring my Daddy home again!

I smiled down at the youngster, though
A lump came in my throat,
And marvell'd at the pluck beneath
That little ragged coat.
To hear the way that kiddy talked
It really was sublime,
But there you are! The old, old tale
A Briton all the time!
Said he, 'I've wrote to Gen'ral Bobs,
To join his gallant band
I'll pay the naughty Boers for keeping Daddy when I land!

Chorus

I learnt his father was a private
In an Irish corps,
But when I heard the name I knew
He'd never see him more;
For in the list of casualties
I'd only read that day,
Beneath the scorching veldt that youngster's
Gallant father lay.
The nipper left me standing there,
And marched away with pride,
But turned his little curly head
Again to me and cried -

Chorus

Performed by Shirley Williams (voice) and Nigel Williams (piano)
Image: Private collection

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