Said Hanrahan
John O'Brien's 1921 Australian poem about a rural perpetual pessimist who predicts ruin through every seasonal change — set to music as the album's closing track and deep historical precedent for doomsaying.
Summary
The complete text of John O'Brien's 1921 Australian poem, in which Hanrahan — a rural perpetual pessimist — predicts ruin through every seasonal condition: too dry, then too wet, then inevitably the fire that must follow. "We'll all be rooned" is his refrain regardless of what actually happens. As the album's closing track it functions as a deep historical precedent: the doomsaying that runs through the album (music is dying, AI will destroy creativity) is not a modern invention — Hanrahan was doing it in 1919, about the weather.
Lyrics
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak —
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
[Editor- This poem by John O’Brien was published in Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, 1921.]
Published in - John O’Brien. Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1921
Editor’s notes -
bedad = an Irish exclamation, a euphemism for “By God”
cruke = presumably “crook”, being unwell or not good (such as in the Australian colloquialism “Things are crook in Tallarook”)
This poem was published in the The Euroa Advertiser with the comment: “The following humorous verses are copied from “The Catholic Press,” and were contributed by an erstwhile Tocumwal parish priest, who writes under the name of “John O’Brien”:” [see: “Said Hanrahan”, The Euroa Advertiser (Euroa, Vic.), Friday 29 August 1919, page 4]
Filed Under - poetry
Tagged With - Around the Boree Log and Other Verses (John O’Brien 1921), Editor’s notes, John O'Brien (1878-1952) (author), poem, recommended poetry, SourceIACLibrary
Words copied from https://www.australianculture.org/said-hanrahan-john-obrien/ on 21 July 2025.
Detail
The choice of "Said Hanrahan" as the album's closing track is a structural argument. The poem, first published in 1919, predates radio, recording, digital audio, and AI music by decades, yet its logic is identical to the moral panics documented throughout the album: a disruption arrives, Hanrahan names doom, reality persists and transforms, Hanrahan names a new doom. It functions as deep historical evidence for the album's central claim — that "the end of music" is not a response to AI but a recurring human behaviour pattern applied to each new disruption.
Hanrahan is not stupid or malicious; he is genuinely anxious and sometimes right about individual harms while wrong about systemic collapse. The congregation who agrees with him, squatting on their heels chewing bark through every season, is not satirised either — their pessimism is understandable, even rational, given local experience. The poem's target is not the pessimist but the compulsive structure of the pessimism: the refrain that fires before the evidence arrives.
At 7:15, this is the album's longest track — appropriate for a poem that keeps generating new verses of the same complaint. The attribution to John O'Brien (Father P.J. Hartigan, 1878–1952) and the editorial notes give the album an unexpectedly local and literary ending, rooting the cosmic anxiety about AI creativity in a dusty churchyard in rural New South Wales.
Cross-references
- The End Of Music (album)