The Ballad of That P.N by Andrew Barton Paterson

Name: The Ballad of That P.N
Author: Andrew Barton Paterson

"The Ballad of That P.N." is a short satirical political ballad by Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, modeled on the relentless-pursuit structure of Longfellow's "Excelsior," in which a single dogged question is hurled at a fleeing target across three successive scenes. The poem opens at night in a house, where a shadow passes through—once a figure known as "the Genial Dan," now transformed by obsession into "a desperate man." At question time he lies in wait near the colony's Premier, and as the Premier is caught off guard, Dan's voice cuts through "like half a brick" with the poem's driving refrain: "Did ye, or did ye not, pay Crick / Did ye?" The demand is blunt, repetitive, and unanswered, establishing the ballad's comic-menacing tone from the first stanza. In the second stanza the pursuit shifts to sea. The Premier flees by land and by ship, but finds no escape—Dan materializes wherever he goes. The sailors, "with whitened lip," swear that Neptune himself is swimming behind the vessel, a superstitious flourish that heightens the mock-epic absurdity. When the Premier retreats to the stern, he finds it is not the sea-god but Dan again, and through the noise of a gale Dan's "clarion voice" repeats the accusation with even more force: "Ahoy there! Answer, straight and slick! / Did not the Ministry pay Crick / Did they?" The scale of the questioning has grown from a private aside to a public shout battling a storm, underscoring how inescapable and consuming Dan's fixation has become. The third and final stanza moves the chase onto a railway train. The Premier seeks refuge in transit, but Dan erupts from beneath the very seat, "with blazing eye and bristling beard," his ancient enmity undiminished. His words now pour out "like a boiling torrent," and for the first time the Premier is directly named—John See—as Dan demands, "Tell me, John See, and tell me quick / Did not ye pay your shares to Crick / Did ye?" The escalation from house to sea to train, and from vague accusation to a named target, gives the poem a mounting, farcical intensity that ends abruptly on the same unanswered question with which it began. Structurally, the ballad borrows its cadence and refrain device directly from Longfellow's "Excelsior," using that poem's solemn, climbing rhythm for comic and satirical ends instead of noble aspiration. Each stanza follows an identical pattern: a change of setting, the sudden reappearance of Dan, a vivid physical description of his transformation into a wild-eyed pursuer, and the repeated, only slightly varied refrain demanding to know whether money was paid to a man named Crick. The repetition itself is the engine of the poem's humor—no answer is ever given, and the reader is left, like the Premier, endlessly chased by the same unresolved question. The poem is a piece of topical political satire rooted in early-1900s New South Wales colonial politics, referencing real figures: John See, who served as Premier of New South Wales, and William Crick, a controversial NSW politician and solicitor whose conduct and finances were the subject of public scandal and parliamentary scrutiny at the time. "That P.N." in the title is understood to allude to a specific figure or nickname tied to this scandal (likely shorthand current among Paterson's contemporary readers), situating the poem squarely as a piece of occasional journalism-in-verse rather than a timeless pastoral ballad like Paterson's better-known bush poems. Where works such as "The Man from Snowy River" or "Clancy of the Overflow" celebrate the Australian outback and its people, this ballad instead turns Paterson's gift for narrative verse toward the theatre of parliamentary accusation and colonial press controversy, using mock-heroic exaggeration—storms at sea, a torrent of accusation, a man erupting from beneath a train seat—to mock the spectacle of a politician unable to shake off an unresolved question of financial impropriety. In effect, the poem functions as verse journalism: a compact, rhythmically insistent lampoon in which an unanswered question becomes an inescapable haunting, and a nation's leader is reduced to a man perpetually cornered by his own unresolved dealings.

By Andrew Barton Paterson · First published 1940 · Genre: Political Satire, Narrative Poetry, Comic Verse · 300 words

First lines

The shades of night had fallen at last, / When through the house a shadow passed, / That once had been the Genial Dan, / But now become a desperate man, / At question time he waited near, / And on the Premier's startled ear / A voice fell like half a brick / "Did ye, or did ye not, pay Crick / Did ye?"

By land and sea the Premier sped, / But found his foe where'er he fled, / The sailors swore -- with whitened lip -- / That Neptune swam behind the ship: / When to the stern the Premier ran, / Behold, 'twas no one else but Dan, / And through the roaring of the gale / That clarion voice took up the tale, / "Ahoy there! Answer, straight and slick! / Did not the Ministry pay Crick / Did they?"

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The Ballad of That P.N is listed on Textopian as a poem by Andrew Barton Paterson, dated 1940 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: Andrew Barton Paterson
Date: 1940 CE
Language: English
Genres: Political Satire, Narrative Poetry, Comic Verse, Australian Literature, Ballad
Length: 300 words
Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Political Satire — The poem satirizes government accountability through a persistent character pursuing a Premier with questions about financial impropriety, directly critiquing political malfeasance and evasion.
Narrative Poetry — The work employs consistent narrative structure with regular rhyming couplets to tell a coherent story of chase and confrontation across multiple locations and settings.
Comic Verse — Absurdist humor permeates the work, employing exaggeration and repetition—a ghostly figure pursuing across land, sea, and trains—to create comedic effects through surreal situations.
Australian Literature — Written by Banjo Paterson and published in Australian press (Evening News, 1903), engaging with colonial Australian political contexts and sensibilities specific to the era.