page_title: Waltzing Matilda
section_title: Glossary
hierarchical_section_title: Waltzing Matilda / Lyrics / Glossary
caption_attribution_description: Elderly swagman.
context_page_description: "Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's best-known bush ballad, and has been described as the country's "unofficial national anthem".
  The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot with one's belongings in a "matilda" slung over one's back. The song narrates the story of an itinerant worker, or "swagman", making a drink of billy tea at a bush camp and capturing a stray jumbuck to eat. When the jumbuck's owner, a squatter, and three troopers pursue the swagman for theft, he declares "You'll never catch me alive!" and commits suicide by drowning himself in a nearby billabong, after which his ghost haunts the site.
  The original lyric was written in 1895 by Australian poet Banjo Paterson, and were first published as sheet music in 1903. Extensive folklore surrounds the song and the process of its creation, to the extent that it has its own museum, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton, in the Queensland outback, where Paterson wrote the lyrics. In 2012, to remind Australians of the song's significance, Winton organised the inaugural Waltzing Matilda Day to be held on 6 April, the anniversary of its first performance.
context_section_description: The lyrics contain many distinctively Australian English words, some now rarely used outside the song. These include:
  waltzing
  derived from the German term auf der Walz, which means to travel while working as a craftsman and learn new techniques from other masters.
  Matilda
  a romantic term for a swagman's bundle. See below, "Waltzing Matilda".
  Waltzing Matilda
  from the above terms, "to waltz Matilda" is to travel with a swag, that is, with all one's belongings on one's back wrapped in a blanket or cloth. The exact origins of the term "Matilda" are disputed; one fanciful derivation states that when swagmen met each other at their gatherings, there were rarely women to dance with. Nonetheless, they enjoyed a dance and so danced with their swags, which was given a woman's name. However, this appears to be influenced by the word "waltz", hence the introduction of dancing. It seems more likely that, as a swagman's only companion, the swag came to be personified as a woman.
  The National Library of Australia states:
  Matilda is an old Teutonic female name meaning "mighty battle maid". This may have informed the use of "Matilda" as a slang term to mean a de facto wife who accompanied a wanderer. In the Australian bush a man's swag was regarded as a sleeping partner, hence his "Matilda". (Letter to Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, KG from Harry Hastings Pearce, 19 February 1958. Harry Pearce Papers, NLA Manuscript Collection, MS2765)
  swagman
  a man who travelled the country looking for work. The swagman's "swag" was a bed roll that bundled his belongings.
  billabong
  an oxbow lake (a cut-off river bend) found alongside a meandering river
  coolibah tree
  a kind of eucalyptus tree which grows near billabongs
  jumbuck
  a sheep
  billy
  a can for boiling water, usually 1–1.5 litres (2–3 pints)
  tucker bag
  a bag for carrying food
  troopers
  policemen
  squatter
  Australian squatters started as early farmers who raised livestock on land which they did not have the legal title to use; in many cases they later gained legal use of the land even though they did not have full possession, and became wealthy thanks to these large land holdings. The squatter's claim to the land may be as unfounded as is the swagman's claim to the jumbuck.
caption: Photograph of a swagman, c. 1901, holding a billy and carrying a swag on his back
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