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Who'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me? Swagies
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Harry Nathan Manuscript

There is another manuscript, by Harry Nathan, of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. A copy dated 10th August 1905, is held at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. On this copy Nathan wrote that he composed the work in 1900 and registered a similar copy at the Patents Office in 1903 for which copyright was ‘deferred’. This copy is now held at the National Archives of Australia and is stamped 1903. There is a small, related collection at the National Library of Australia (MS1377). From Nathan’s attention to the detail of the copies and dates, it is clear there was some kind of dispute in the copyright: he was probably denied copyright for the melody but granted copyright for his harmonisation.

This version further complicates the story of the song’s creation. The tune in this manuscript is very closely related to the Marie Cowan version. It has the distinguishing characteristic of the repeated high notes on ‘coolibah tree’. However, the chorus contains the text:

Waltzing Matilda, Matilda my darling, You’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me

which is a hybrid between the original Paterson words (containing ‘darling’) and the Marie Cowan version. The ‘swagman’ has already become a ‘jolly swagman’. The other verses are close to the Paterson original and not the text as arranged by Marie Cowan to promote Billy Tea.

Harry Nathan was a music teacher and was briefly conductor of the Darling Downs Liedertafel at Toowoomba in 1903.

Details for this section were sourced from Harry Nathan’s manuscripts, from A Waltz with Matilda by Oscar Mendelsohn (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1966), and from Mendelsohn’s papers in the National Library, MS1857.

Thomas Wood and the internationalisation of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ >

 

 

'Waltzing Matilda' arranged and harmonised by Harry A.Nathan

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