A Ballad of Ducks
The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told
This terrible tale of the days of old,
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks.
"Well, it ain't all joy bein' on the land
With an overdraft that'd knock you flat;
And the rabbits have pretty well took command;
But the hardest thing for a man to stand
Is the feller who says 'Well I told you so!
You should ha' done this way, don't you know!' --
I could lay a bait for a man like that.
"The grasshoppers struck us in ninety-one
And what they leave -- well, it ain't de luxe.
But a growlin' fault-findin' son of a gun
Who'd lent some money to stock our run --
I said they'd eaten what grass we had --
Says he, 'Your management's very bad;
You had a right to have kept some ducks!'
"To have kept some ducks! And the place was white!
Wherever you went you had to tread
On grasshoppers guzzlin' day and night;
And then with a swoosh they rose in flight,
If you didn't look out for yourself they'd fly
Like bullets into your open eye
And knock it out of the back of your head.
"There isn't a turkey or goose or swan,
Or a duck that quacks, or a hen that clucks,
Can make a difference on a run
When a grasshopper plague has once begun;
'If you'd finance us,' I says, 'I'd buy
Ten thousand emus and have a try;
The job,' I says, 'is too big for ducks!
"'You must fetch a duck when you come to stay;
A great big duck -- a Muscovy toff --
Ready and fit,' I says, 'for the fray;
And if the grasshoppers come our way
You turn your duck into the lucerne patch,
And I'd be ready to make a match
That the grasshoppers eat his feathers off!"
"He came to visit us by and by,
And it just so happened one day in spring
A kind of cloud came over the sky --
A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high,
And nine miles thick, and nine hundred wide,
Flyin' in regiments, side by side,
And eatin' up every living thing.
"All day long, like a shower of rain,
You'd hear 'em smackin' against the wall,
Tap, tap, tap, on the window pane,
And they'd rise and jump at the house again
Till their crippled carcasses piled outside.
But what did it matter if thousands died --
A million wouldn't be missed at all.
"We were drinkin' grasshoppers -- so to speak --
Till we skimmed their carcasses off the spring;
And they fell so thick in the station creek
They choked the waterholes all the week.
There was scarcely room for a trout to rise,
And they'd only take artificial flies --
They got so sick of the real thing.
"An Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags
When the hoppers rose for their morning flight
With the flapping noise like a million flags:
And the kitchen chimney was stuffed with bags
For they'd fall right into the fire, and fry
Till the cook sat down and began to cry --
And never a duck or fowl in sight.
"We strolled across to the railroad track --
Under a cover beneath some trucks,
I sees a feather and hears a quack;
I stoops and I pulls the tarpaulin back --
Every duck in the place was there,
No good to them was the open air.
'Mister,' I says, 'There's your blanky ducks!'"
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
Andrew Barton Paterson frames the poem as a yarn told by a weather-beaten rural voice on a rattling train, so the story arrives with both swagger and comic exaggeration. The tale centers on a landholder who has been blamed for not being prepared for a plague of grasshoppers, especially by a smug lender who insists that the property should have "kept some ducks." What follows is a lively defense of the speaker's judgment, built through a mock-heroic account of pest destruction, ruined grass, choked waterholes, and absurdly massive swarms.
The poem moves from grievance to demonstration. At first the speaker argues that no sensible farm management could have solved the problem, because the infestation was overwhelming; then he imagines, with growing comic confidence, the practical value of ducks as insect-eaters. The final irony comes when the promised ducks are discovered hidden under railway trucks, safe from the onslaught while the countryside is ravaged. Paterson leaves readers with a tension between rural ingenuity and helplessness: the "solution" is funny, but the scale of the disaster makes the joke sting. Beneath the humor is a clear admiration for people trying to survive conditions that mock ordinary advice.
Theme
- Rural resilience - The poem celebrates the rough ability to endure hardship on the land, even when the odds are absurdly against the farmer.
- Mocking hindsight - Paterson pokes fun at people who offer easy advice after the fact, showing how meaningless "I told you so" can be in a crisis.
- Environmental devastation - The grasshopper plague is portrayed as a consuming force that strips the landscape and overwhelms normal farming life.
- Practical ingenuity - The repeated suggestion about ducks turns into a comic version of bush problem-solving, where survival depends on improvisation.
- Comedy in adversity - The poem turns a ruined property into a tall tale, using exaggeration and wit to make disaster feel both humorous and memorable.
Literary Devices
- Ballad narrative - The poem uses a story-telling structure with dialogue and a dramatic turn, giving the account the energy of an oral yarn.
- Hyperbole - The grasshoppers are described in wildly inflated numbers and scale, which heightens both the comic effect and the sense of disaster.
- Colloquial diction - Paterson's informal speech and rural idiom create authenticity and help the voice sound confident, quick-witted, and Australian.
- Irony - The title object, the ducks, are expected to solve the problem, yet they are found safely hidden away instead of doing their supposed job.
- Simile - Comparisons such as the swarm moving like a storm or bullets sharpen the physical vividness of the infestation.
- Personification - The grasshoppers are given near-army behavior, making the plague feel like a deliberate invading force.
Symbolism
- Ducks - They stand for practical rural solutions, but also for the comic inadequacy of neat answers to vast natural problems.
- Grasshoppers - The swarm symbolizes uncontrollable environmental disaster and the fragility of farming life.
- The railway train - The moving train frames the poem as a traveling anecdote and suggests the spread of news, memory, and bush story-telling.
- Lucerne patch - This represents cultivated land and the hope of protecting valuable feed from destruction.
- Railway trucks - Their sheltering space becomes a symbol of accidental safety, as the ducks survive by hiding rather than by heroism.
Tone
Paterson's tone is brisk, ironic, and amused, with the voice of a man who enjoys his own storytelling as much as his point. He sounds impatient with know-it-all criticism, but he keeps that irritation wrapped in humor and boastful exaggeration. For the reader, the mood is animated and comic at first, then increasingly hectic as the grasshopper plague grows into a ridiculous catastrophe. The final discovery of the ducks produces a satisfying wink of relief, but it also leaves a faint sense of how thin the line is between practical farming and utter helplessness.
Historical Context
Paterson is closely associated with Australian bush writing, where rural labor, drought, pests, and hard luck often appear alongside humor and verbal agility. This poem fits that tradition by turning a farming crisis into a spoken anecdote full of local speech and practical complaints. Its setting reflects a period in which pastoral life was shaped by environmental extremes and by the economic pressures of running land under difficult conditions.
The poem also belongs to the broader ballad tradition adapted for Australian subjects: a fast-moving narrative, a memorable voice, and a comic edge all help transform ordinary hardship into public folklore. The result is both regional and national in feeling, capturing a style of wit that makes endurance itself part of the story.
Similar Poems
- The Man from Snowy River - Banjo Paterson
- Mulga Bill's Bicycle - Banjo Paterson
- The Bush Undertaker - Henry Lawson
- How We Beat the Favourite - A. B. Paterson
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