Bare-Legged Kate

Words:  John Dengate
Tune: Bare legged Joe




First Verse and Chorus:
Bare legged Kate with your natural grace,
The big big sad eyes in the Irish face.
A poor bush girl when the summer is high 
In the stony hills of Gundagai.

Bare legged Kate why do you weep 
When the men ride by with the travelling sheep?
Does the sight of the drover make you sad?
Do you think of the father you never had?

Bare legged Kate why do you run, 
Down to the creek in the setting sun?
Down where the eyes of the world cannot see - 
Run Kate, run, from poverty.

Bare legged Kate, there is gold in the hills
But you know that the cyanide process kills. 
Poisons the miners and cuts them down 
In the mean little homes below the town.

Bare legged Kate, when the floods come down, 
It's the poor on the creeks are the ones who drown:
When the great Murrumbidgee is thundering by 
Through the haunted hills of Gundagai.






Published by the Bush Music Club in the 1982 collection, My Shout! with the dedication:


"Written for my mother, Born Kathleen Mary Kelly, Gundagai, NSW, 1914."