How M’Ginnis Went Missing [poem by Banjo Paterson]

[Editor: This poem by “Banjo” Paterson was published in The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, 1895; previously published in The Bulletin, 21 September 1889.]

How M’Ginnis Went Missing

Let us cease our idle chatter,
Let the tears bedew our cheek,
For a man from Tallangatta
Has been missing for a week.

Where the roaring flooded Murray
Covered all the lower land,
There he started in a hurry
With a bottle in his hand.

And his fate is hid for ever,
But the public seem to think
That he slumbered by the river,
’Neath the influence of drink.

And they scarcely seem to wonder
That the river, wide and deep,
Never woke him with its thunder,
Never stirred him in his sleep.

And the crashing logs came sweeping
And their tumult filled the air,
Then M’Ginnis murmured, sleeping,
‘’Tis a wake in ould Kildare.’

So the river rose and found him
Sleeping softly by the stream.
And the cruel waters drowned him
Ere he wakened from his dream.

And the blossom-tufted wattle,
Blooming brightly on the lea,
Saw M’Ginnis and the bottle
Going drifting out to sea.

Source:
Andrew Barton Paterson. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1896 [January 1896 reprinting of the October 1895 edition], pages 105-106

Previously published in: The Bulletin, 21 September 1889