The Flash Stockman

Traditional



I'm a stockman to me trade and I call me Ugly Dave,
I'm old and grey and only got one eye.
In the yard I'm good, of course, but just put me on a horse
I'll go where lots of young 'uns daren't try.

I've lead 'em through the gidgee over country rough and ridgy,
I'll loose them in the very worst of scrub.
I can ride both rough and easy, with a brumby I'm a daisy,
And a rightdown bobby-dazzler in a pub.

Just watch me use the whip, I can give the dawdlers gyp,
I can make the flamin' echoes roar and ring.
With a branding-iron, well, I'm a perfect flamin' swell,
In fact I'm duke of every blasted thing.

To watch me skin a sheep, it's so perfect you could weep,
I can act the silvertail as if my blood was blue.
You could strike me pink or dead, if I stood upon me head,
I'd be just as good as any other two.

I've a notion in me pate that it's luck, it isn't fate,
That I'm so far above the common run.
So, for ev'rything I do, you could cut me square in two
For I'm much two flamin' good to be in one.


Closely related to The Woolloomooloo Lair, The Flash Stockman was published in 1895 in the Queenslander. These lyrics are the Martin Wyndham-Read version.