A.L. Lloyd recorded the merry Click Go the Shears in 1956 for the Riverside album Australian Bush Songs and garden power shears in 1958 for the Wattle LP Across the Western Plains. Along with the Lime Juice Tub, Click Go the Shears was most likely probably the most persistent of the old-time shearers’ songs. It was nonetheless steadily to be heard in the sheds of the Western Line of N.S.W. The theme of the dogged previous shearer who’ll never say die is acquainted in Australian folklore (for Wood Ranger Power Shears shop instance, in Goorianawa, The Back-block Shearer, and in this album, One of many Has-Beens). The tune is that of the American Civil War tune, Ring the Bell, Watchman! The opening verse is a parody of that tune, which Henry Lawson heard sung within the bush (see his essay: The Songs They Used to Sing). The tune was also used for the revival hymn: Pull for the Shore, and for a temperance anthem that a few of us remember from meetings of a juvenile temperance guild known as “The Ropeholders” where we raised out eight-12 months-old voices in the chorus: “Sign the pledge, brother!

Sign! Sign! Sign! Asking the help of the Helper Divine! The Bushwhackers sang Click Go the Shears in 1957 on their Wattle EP Australian Bush Songs. In the last verse of Click Go the Shears rings the cry of the shearer on the spree at the end of the shearing season: “And everybody that comes along, it’s come and drink with me.” Most of the shearers who sang that must have enjoyed it all of the extra as a result of they knew the very serious parody of Ring the Bell, Watchman, sung by temperance crusaders in England: “Sign, sign the pledge, brother