Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 291

Transcript

Once in the fifties, going from Mount Peel to Macdonald’s, I came to a small paddock, sod fence and top rail, and noticed two men, one at the gate fence, the other holding, apparently with all his strength, a sheep. As I came nearer, I saw he was a fine, well horned merino ram. When I came up, the man at the gate was splitting his sides laughing. The other holding on to the ram exhausted and winded, shouting for help. “What’s the matter?” “Why”, he said, “that there bloomin’ ‘Johnny’ give me a hour of it, hard pegging, he come at me, and there was I, for a blooming’ hour, holdin’ ‘im, and fightin’ ‘im, when this chummy come along, an I holler, and sez I to ‘im, “Here”, sez I, you hold ‘im in, till I get that tether rope an make ‘im fast. I want to get him out of that there gate”. He comes, the poor silly, and I gives him the horns, and tells ‘im to hold on, an ‘e’s a been holdin’ on now about of an hour”. “Well, d—n it, why don’t you help him?” “Oh, yes, ain’t it loikley, and he’ll let him go, and then ‘pose he comes at me again? No I don’t. If I had a ‘Tommy” I’d split his dam cokernut.” The end of it was he went in, I had a bit of rope, enough to lash one pair of legs, and there we left him. The poor devil of a new chum was next door to dead, with exhaustion and fright. A good fighting ram is a real stayer – ain’t knocked out in one round.

[caricature of a man being felled by a charging ram, and another silhouette named] Mr Caverhill.