In Memory of Marie Cowan

In the Presbyterian section of Gore Hill Cemetery on Sydney’s North Shore lies a rectangular headstone with a plaque that bears this epitaph:           

MAIDIE
WIFE OF
WILLIAM COWAN
24th MARCH 1919

The plot in which the headstone is set is square, curbed and filled with pebbles. A small tree stands nearby; sometimes, when there is a breeze, a light scattering of leaves from the tree falls across the words inscribed on the tablet. Here lies Marie Cowan, whose arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda” is the tune we sing today.

Of her nature and personality I have no special knowledge. All that I know of her is derived from my reading, including of local history articles; deficiencies exist in the information I can provide. But Marie Cowan rightly belongs in the firmament of those who helped create our most famous folksong, and the story of “Waltzing Matilda” is incomplete without the inclusion of some account of her parentage and progress in life.

Marie was the eldest of three children born to James and Sarah Barr. The Australian Biographical Register records that Marie was born in 1855 at Bega in New South Wales; another source gives 1858 as her date of birth and makes no mention of Bega. Her father James Barr was born near Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, in 1815 to James and Rebecca Barr. He came to New South Wales in 1848, and in 1850 married Sarah Dolphin. James Barr prospered in Australia; he became the licensee of the Waverley Hotel in Darling Street, Balmain, and from 1883 to 1889 the family lived in a two-storey, stuccoed brick, two-house terrace he had built there. Marie’s sister Sarah was born in 1861 and her brother James in 1864. Marie was named Anna Maria, but was known as Hannah, or Marie.

On November 28, 1888, at the Balmain Presbyt­erian Church, Marie married William Cowan. William was born at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1860, educated in Glasgow, and learned the tea trade in London. He came to Australia in 1887 and joined the firm of James Inglis and Company, tea merchants. He became a director of the company in 1902 and Managing Director in 1908. In 1896, Marie and William moved to a house they had bought in Lindfield on Sydney’s North Shore. In 1906, William became the first President of the Shire Council of Ku-ring-gai. In 1892, Marie gave birth to their only child, a son, who married in 1917 and had two sons.

Marie’s mother Sarah had died in 1890, and after forty-four years in Australia, her father James died on October 10, 1892, at Neutral Bay aged seventy-seven. Marie’s parents were buried at Waverley Cemetery. Records indicate that when James died, his son James was twenty-eight, Marie was thirty-four and her sister Sarah, also married, was thirty-one. This estimate of Marie’s age contradicts the Australian Biographical Registry entry as to her date of birth: if the latter were correct, then in 1892, she would have been thirty-seven.

Turning now to an account of events leading up to Marie’s involvement with “Waltzing Matilda”: in 1895, while staying in Queensland, “Banjo” Paterson had met Christina Macpherson. Her playing on an autoharp of a tune she had memorised inspired him to write lyrics to preserve the melody. Christina Macpherson had heard the tune the previous year at the annual steeplechase at Warrnambool, Victoria. A band played a tune by Thomas Bulch which he called “The Craigielee March”. Tom Bulch’s march was, in turn, derived from a Scottish melody, “Thou Bonnie Wood o’ Craigie Lee”, composed by James Barr (1781–1860) to words by his friend Robert Tannahill (1774–1810), a native of Paisley.

It seems fitting that Marie Cowan, the daughter of Paisley-born James Barr, should create a tune that had its origins in “Thou Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielee”, a melody composed by a Scotsman with the same name as her father, and with words created by the Weaver Poet of Paisley, Robert Tannahill.

In 1902, Banjo Paterson sold the “Waltzing Matilda” verses, not the music, to the publishers and booksellers Angus & Robertson, who had in turn sold the right to set the poem to music and perform it as a song to the James Inglis company. Mr Inglis had bought for a few pounds several items of unwanted material from Angus & Robertson which included Banjo’s manuscript. The pictorial image for Inglis’s Billy Tea was already a bushman carrying a swag so that when Inglis saw the lyrics, he could see that it was just the thing to advertise his product. One or two settings were made, but these were deemed unsatisfactory, and it was then that Marie Cowan was invited to try her hand at it.

Marie Cowan was an accomplished singer and pianist; she composed music and had an authoritative grasp of the airs of Scotland. Her husband, who was to outlive her by twenty-two years, retained his broad Scottish accent into old age. He too had a keen interest in music as a performer with choral societies: the Sydney Liedertafel and the Philharmonic Society. With the aim of promoting sales of the “Billy” brand of Inglis tea, William invited Marie to compose a musical arrangement of Banjo’s lyrics. In one account, it is related that William was told by Mr Angus that Banjo had told him the words could be sung to a Scotch air called “Lockie Marie”; to date, I have not been able to discover that melody.

Marie’s arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda” was published in 1903. The author of On the Origins of Waltzing Matilda, Harry Hastings Pearce, refers to Sydney May’s short book The Story of Waltzing Matilda. Pearce states:

May quotes a letter from George Sutherland, of Allan & Co, saying that Inglis wrote to Paterson, whom he knew, asking whether any musical setting had been made of the verses … “Paterson did not reply”, but a reply did come from Angus & Robertson! … May says that “discussions did take place between Paterson and both Mr. and Mrs. Cowan”. After she had made her setting, Sutherland says that Paterson phoned the Cowans, “Your song received, very satisfactory. Marie Cowan has done a good job. Good luck to her.”

Dennis O’Keeffe, in Waltzing Matilda: The Secret History of Australia’s Favourite Song, quotes from Who Wrote the Ballads? by John Manifold: “The late Mr. Cowan confirmed that before copies of the edition were issued to the public, he had sent a copy to Banjo Paterson,” after which the telephone call was made.

O’Keeffe refers to a letter Christina Macpherson wrote to Dr Thomas Wood in 1931 which was found among her personal effects after her death. Whether the letter was ever sent is in question, but in those days, it was not uncommon for people to keep a handwritten copy of letters posted. The letter describes how she and Banjo came to write “Waltzing Matilda”. O’Keeffe states that the letter also said that “Paterson wrote to her asking for a copy of the tune, which she sent to him, and that he had passed it on to a musical friend.”

There are other ways in which Marie Cowan could have heard the tune, especially given her fondness for Scottish songs. Undoubtedly, “Thou Bonnie Wood o’ Craigielee” would have been familiar to her. She could have obtained sheet music of Tom Bulch’s “Craigielee March”. In addition, the original “Waltzing Matilda” had been in circulation with soldiers during the Boer War; from there the song could have found its way back to Sydney.

Some changes were made to the original lyrics in Marie’s arrangement, and the word jolly was inserted to describe the swagman and the sheep, presumably to enhance the image of Billy Tea as an invigorating restorative. Sheila and Peter Forrest’s informative work Banjo and Christina raises the possibility of an amusing alternative interpretation, given the swagman was helping himself to someone else’s livestock: in those days, the word jolly was a substitute for bloody or damn with bushmen who eschewed swearing.

The Inglis company sent a batch of the sheet music to the firm’s representative in Townsville, thus helping to spread the song through northern Queensland.

Marie Cowan’s death in the Sydney Sanitarium at Wahroonga in 1919 was apparently sudden. William married again, but had no more children, though there were grandchildren and stepchildren. He died in 1941.

Gore Hill Cemetery is beside a major highway; it is a stone’s throw from a large railway station, high-rise office and apartment buildings, a substantial hospital and the noise of continuous traffic. But there is peace where Marie lies. The graves surrounding hers are many decades old, and most of them are in a state of dilapidation. Some are covered in overgrowth, some have elaborate headstones and epitaphs in the nature of public declarations. By contrast, the simple message on the headstone of Marie’s grave has a quality of intimacy. Instead of her full name, her grieving husband has chosen a Scottish diminutive, his pet name for her since the early days of their marriage—his one and only “Maidie”. The poignant refrain in the song Marie Cowan helped to make famous with her musical arrangement has echoes in her own story.

Diana Figgis wrote “Capturing Gossamer: A Waltz with Matilda” in the January-February 2020 issue, and “Banjo and Berlioz: The Matilda Fugue” in January-February 2021.