The Sausage Candidate, a Tale of the Elections

The Sausage Candidate, a Tale of the Elections

"The Sausage Candidate: A Tale of the Elections" is a comic ballad by Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson set on election day in the town of Parramatta, during a rougher, rowdier era of colonial Australian politics that the narrator recalls with nostalgic humor, contrasting the "brave men" of earlier generations — hard-drinking, hard-fighting, and unpretentious — with the tamer electioneering of his own time. The poem centers on a candidate named Jones, a tall, gaunt figure who presents himself to the electorate as "the people's friend, the poor's protector." Beneath this respectable public image, however, Jones harbors a shameful secret: he once served as trustee for his young orphaned niece and grossly abused that position of trust, systematically embezzling her inheritance. Paterson details the mechanics of the fraud with satirical relish — Jones kept meticulous account books, not out of honesty but as a defensive measure against future accusations, and in those books he habitually doubled the price of anything he bought for the girl. He dressed her in coarse cotton but billed the estate for silk and satin; he took her on a single harbour outing and charged such an exorbitant sum for bread and meat that, as the narrator quips, it seemed as though the pair had literally eaten money. Jones's downfall stems from his own carelessness rather than any external investigation. Among his padded and fraudulent entries, he makes the fatal error of writing down an absurdly inflated charge: "Two pounds of sausages — two guineas." This ridiculous, easily remembered detail leaks out into public gossip, and the town buzzes with the sense that Jones's conduct was beyond the pale. Yet Jones proves shameless. Public disapproval slides off him "like water," and having never repaid his niece a penny, he brazenly puts himself forward as a candidate for Parliament, running as a committed free trader. His considerable personal wealth and the momentum of an apparently successful campaign make his election look assured. Providence, however, intervenes through the person of Brown — an ordinary townsman who knows the full story of Jones's theft and resolves to see justice done in his own comic, theatrical way. Rather than simply heckling or booing at Jones's public meeting, Brown devises an elaborate and pointed act of protest: he purchases two pounds of sausages from a local dealer — deliberately mirroring the exact fraudulent entry from Jones's account book — and lashes the meat to the end of a long bamboo pole. Brown explains his plan with relish and bravado, declaring that when Jones rises to give his election speech, Brown will neither cheer nor jeer with the crowd but will instead use his improvised weapon to strike the candidate directly in the face, hoping the police are not close enough to stop him. The plan unfolds exactly as staged. As the campaign crowd pushes and surges beneath the speaker's platform, Brown waits calmly with his sausage-tipped bamboo at the ready. At the very moment Jones reaches a bombastic peak in his oration — proclaiming the present era "the boss age" of all ages — Brown thrusts forward and strikes him squarely between the eyes with the sausages, shouting the mocking, pointed question, "What's the price of sausage?" — a direct public reference to the fraudulent expense that exposed him. The assault is both literal and symbolic: Jones is left "covered with disgrace," pelted and smeared with meat in front of the assembled electors, his dignified candidate's facade shattered in an instant of pure slapstick humiliation. Utterly defeated, Jones slinks away from the jeering, hooting crowd, his political ambitions in ruins. Yet Paterson closes the poem on a note of wry, cynical irony rather than straightforward moral triumph: despite Jones's personal disgrace and the crowd's scorn for him as an individual, the political cause and ideology he represented — protectionism — nonetheless carries the day and "proudly rules the deck." The implication is that the electorate's rejection of the corrupt man does nothing to alter the outcome of the underlying political contest, since voters are ultimately swayed by economic platform and party allegiance rather than personal virtue. Structurally, the poem works as a classic Paterson bush ballad: brisk rhyming quatrains, a rollicking narrative rhythm, broad comic caricature, and a folksy, conversational narratorial voice that treats scandal and violence with cheerful irreverence. Its satire targets the hypocrisy of public men who cloak private corruption in the language of civic virtue, the gullibility or indifference of an electorate swayed by wealth and rhetoric, and the theatrical, sometimes physically rowdy nature of colonial Australian election campaigning, where public shaming by ordinary citizens could serve as a rough substitute for formal accountability.

By Andrew Barton Paterson · First published 1940 · Genre: Political Satire, Comic/Humorous Verse, Narrative Ballad · 874 words

First lines

Our fathers, brave men were and strong, / And whisky was their daily liquor; / They used to move the world along / In better style than now -- and quicker. / Elections then were sport, you bet! / A trifle rough, there's no denying / When two opposing factions met / The skin and hair were always flying.

When "cabbage-trees" could still be worn / Without the question, "Who's your hatter? " / There dawned a bright election morn / Upon the town of Parramatta. / A man called Jones was all the go / The people's friend, the poor's protector; / A long, gaunt, six-foot slab of woe, / He sought to charm the green elector.

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The Sausage Candidate, a Tale of the Elections is listed on Textopian as a poem by Andrew Barton Paterson, dated 1940 CE.

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politics · elections · satire · humorous · Australian · political-commentary · candidates · electoral · fiction · social-satire · wit · irony

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