Hello, I'm David Mulhallen and may I welcome you to “Songs and Stories of Australia”. You've had the ABC Radio programs and the book, plus the cassettes and CDs and now here is what will be a regular e-magazine column written especially and exclusively for Simply Australia.

For each issue, I am offering you some thoughts on the various and numerous aspects of Australian Folk centred around topics presented in so many of those radio programs, from concert performances to workshops, special interviews to general programs on various themes and ideas.

In this first article, I would like to talk about how 'A Swag of Yarns' came into being and how I developed the concept of the program into an idea for live shows, the first of which was a special show as part of the 1994 Mudjmba Folk Festival presented by the Queensland Folk Federation.

I had been given the mission to come up with a completely new folk program based around spoken word as opposed to song and music. Essentially, being ABC Radio National, the brief was talk in the form of story-telling and talk about Folk. At first I thought I would hang on to the successful concept of “Songs and Stories of Australia" and just change the emphasis from music and song to talk and spoken word, be it ballads and verse or yarn spinning and story-telling. And yet, as I travelled down this path I found that I had outlived “Songs and Stories” and instead, I really did want to explore the concepts of the yarn and of yarn-spinning and story-telling in folk and their roles in the Australian Folk Tradition.

Yarn Spinning was of special interest, mostly because I had often seen yarn spinning competitions at folk festivals and I'd come to view them as an excuse for people to tell jokes and have the much needed early morning “hair of the dog”. But I also know that there are many serious folk enthusiasts and students who consider the yarn to be uniquely Australian and for that reason alone, yarn-spinning deserved something more than a passing glance.

line drawing © Ron Edwards

But what is a yarn? Well there's the rub. Ron Edwards has a view, which is very specific and yet all embracing. Others have opinions that vary loosely around what Ron describes as his viewpoint and then there are those who have an altogether different opinion. As with most debates everyone is right to some extent and some are perhaps more right than others.

It's said that everyone has a story to tell or a favourite yarn either that they enjoy telling themselves or that they have enjoyed hearing from someone else. But if you actually ask someone to explain what a yarn is, most people freeze and then gulp and then try and explain without knowing what they mean. In fact, most people don't actually know how to define a yarn, even though they might know what it is and can probably tell a few themselves.

Basically, a yarn is a story that is passed on in conversation from one person to another, as a form of entertainment, which is probably why most yarns are humorous or ironic and frequently an exaggeration of what actually happened. Fishing Yarns are a good example with the ever-present touch of boasting – how the person overcame great difficulties to catch this monster fish. In contrast there are stories about practical jokes played on work mates, memories of some past experience such as a coincidence or a mishap, travellers' tales and all types of other stories people relate to each other about an experience that happened to them or someone else and that makes for good telling.

But, rather me try and explain what I think a yarn is; I've neatly hand-balled the question across to three experts, Ron Edwards, Warren Fahey and Laurie Muller.

Ron Edwards is well known as Australia's leading folk collector and is highly regarded for his many books including “The Australian Yarn”, “The Overlander”,” The Big Book of Australian Folk Song” and “Fred's Crab and other Bush Yarns” as well as many other books about craftwork and leatherwork such as whip making.

Warren Fahey is Chief Larrikin and well-known folk singer, story-teller and collector and Laurie Muller is University Queensland Press, Publisher, Folk Enthusiast and himself a fine Yarn-Spinner.

Together, they share the stage at the 1994 Mudjimba Folk Festival for a special recording session I organised for my program on ABC Radio National of the time titled “A Swag of Yarns” and we start off with Ron Edwards who was responding to the suggestion that all yarns are exaggerated stories.