This poem was previously published in Farmer’s Weekly, on 18 June 2010. Below the poem was written: ‘By Edgar Matthews from the Tukulu Collection, published in the 1950s’.
Michelle Paterson
My mother, Dorothy Lavin, was born and grew up on the farm Penryn in the Alice district, not far from the farm ‘Tukulu’, owned by Edgar D Matthews. In 1956 Matthews published the book Tukulu, the story of his life and his determination to reclaim degraded land. ‘The Law of the Land’ is printed on page xvii in the foreword and is attributed to ‘Anon’. My father knew the poem by heart and I learned it at a young age.
I would also like to know the truth about this great poem.
Sandy Speedy, by email
The poem ‘The Law of the Land’ was written by Oswin Ramsay in 1940. It was written by ‘a farmer to his son’ for a friend who was worried whether his sons would look after his farm well. He submitted the poem to Farmer’s Weekly that same year and received two guineas for his effort! We have the original cutting from the magazine in our possession together with the original typed poem. Oswin preferred to use the nom de plume ‘Zed’ as he described himself as ‘no poet’, but there was a misprint ‘Ted’ in the original publication. Oswin farmed in the Whittlesea district until the early 1980s.
Anita Ker-Fox and Judy Niebieszczanski, nee Ramsay (Oswin’s daughters)
