Tom said:
You'll come a waltzing Martilda with me.
You knew that one would get my attention didn't ya!
Seriously, ya need to be following the real song, not the commercial version. If it says about his billy boiling in more than one place then it is a version written as part of an advertising campaign for a product called Billy Tea. And BTW, used without acknowledgement or ever paying a penny of royalties to the composer. He was paid 'five quid' for the song back in 1900.
The US gets a mention too, somebody wrongly claimed the rights to it and registered them in his name in the US! Wait for it, when Australia played Waltzing Matilda for our performance at the close of the Atlanta Olympics, we paid him for the rights to play our own song. Does that suck!
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/Copyright.html#copyrightMC So don't make any performances of the version he registered, you might have to pay for the privilege!
And just to add to some more thread drift, the song is actually about a shearer's strike in far north Queensland and how it was broken up by police bully boys who set fire to the shearing shed to smoke the strikers out because the squatter wanted to pay less for his shearing than was enough to keep the shearer's and their families fed. One of the survivors wandered away before the police could catch him and because he was so fearful for the brutality of the corrupt coppers of the time, he took his life in a nearby billabong ( backwater creek).
This site should help set the story straight and also give you the real version of the song and how it came to be.
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/
And a riddle, what was the name of the swagman? Hint: It's in the song.
