Another Fall of Rain

About this arrangement

A shearers’ song from the sheds, wishing for rain so the hard work can stop for a day, sung to an American tune of 1871. It is in C major and moves almost entirely in quavers (eighth notes), eight to a bar, with a long note at the end of every second line. The tune runs from the G below middle C up to the A above it: the hand dips low for “fort-night’s time or more” and reaches up for “if the sheep get hard-er”. Every line starts with a pickup before the bar line. The left hand plays chords, C, F, G and G7, changing on the beat.

Practice tip: Keep the quavers even and light, like steady clipping. Play the pickup with the thumb on the G below middle C, then move the hand up so the thumb sits on middle C for bar 1. Look ahead to each long note: that is where the singer breathes and where your hand can move.

The words

The weather had been sultry for a fortnight's time or more, And the shearers had been driving might and main, For some had got the century who'd ne'er got it before, And now all hands were wishing for the rain. A few had taken quarters and were coiling in their bunks, When we shore the sixtooth wethers from the plain. And if the sheep get harder, then a few more men will funk, Un less we get another fall of rain.

A short history

Another Fall of Rain was printed in 1905 in Banjo Paterson’s Old Bush Songs, with a note that it was sung to the air of “Little Low Log Cabin in the Lane”, Will S. Hays’s “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane”; nobody knows who wrote the words. It is a shearing-shed song. In hot, sultry weather the work is hard, the best shearer’s wrist is bandaged, and everyone hopes for rain, because wet sheep cannot be shorn and the shed has to stop. To “get the century” is to shear a hundred sheep in a day.

The tune was written in 1871 by the American songwriter Will S. Hays for the blackface minstrel shows of the day, with words in the dialect those shows used. The tune outlived them and became widely popular, and Australian bush singers put new words to it, as they did with many popular tunes of the time.

The words here are Paterson’s first two verses.

Quick facts

Tune

Will S. Hays, 1871 (“The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane”)

Words

Traditional (Australian, printed 1905)

Key

C major

Time signature

4/4

Length

16 bars and a pickup

Tempo

Steadily, crotchet = 96

Difficulty

Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 101 of 201)

Type

Australian

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers