155:"But at last Bill couldn’t stand it any longer. He made up his mind to go and have it out, even if there was a whole agricultural show of prize and honourable-mention fighting-cocks in Page’s yard. He got down from the wood-heap and started off across the ploughed field, his head down, his elbows out, and his thick awkward legs prodding away at the furrows behind for all they were worth."
65:
Page borrows an experienced game-bird from town. Page and
Mitchell's father agree on a fight, and Mitchell is forbidden to attend. Mitchell scales a tree and watches the fight unfold over a fence. Jim, the more experienced bird, runs Bill in circles for a whole hour until the large rooster can no
58:. Not even Bill himself recognised his own peculiar skill, and he always "thought it was another rooster challenging him, and he wanted badly to find that other bird." When Mitchell's neighbour, an Irishman named Page, brings home a big white rooster, the two birds become involved in a vicious
145:"Bill would stand on tiptoe, and hold his elbows out, and curve his neck, and go two or three times as if he was swallowing nest-eggs, and nearly break his neck and burst his gizzard; and then there’d be no sound at all where he was—only a cock crowing in the distance."
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Mitchell's only neighbour, an
Irishman. He and Mitchell's father had never been able to agree on anything. Doesn't mind when Bill defeats his own white rooster in a tussle, yet seeks out a fighting-bird that might defeat
150:"Sometimes he’d be out all day crowing and listening all over the country, and then come home dead tired, and rest and cool off in a hole that the hens had scratched for him in a damp place under the water-cask sledge."
62:. Though Bill emerges victorious, Page announces that it was "a grand foight" and bears no malice, yet he is then constantly on the lookout for a fighting-cock that may topple Bill.
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longer move. Jim then gives Bill a "father of a hiding." Bill, his pride completely shattered after a defeat, is “so disgusted with himself that he under the cask and die.”
160:" held his head lower and lower and his wings further and further out from his sides, and prodded away harder and harder at the ground behind, but it wasn’t any use."
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The experienced game-bird that Page borrows from town, leaving five-pounds deposit on him, in the hope that he will beat Bill. Though
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He is a ventriloquist, but doesn't realise it himself. He is a very proud rooster, and is always yearning for a fight.
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than Bill, Jim runs the larger, heavier bird is circles until he is no longer to move, at which point Jim strikes.
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The narrator of the story. He speaks of this fond childhood memory as if he is telling the yarn to a companion.
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The story begins with
Mitchell reminiscing about the first time a cousin noticed that Bill the rooster was a
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Often referred to as
Mitchell's 'Old Man.' Does not tell Mitchell about the fight, and gives him
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91:"A big mongrel of no particular breed, though the old lady said he was a ‘brammer.’"
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165:"Bill was so disgusted with himself that he went under the cask and died."
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the swagman as its main character and narrator. The story concerns a
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that
Mitchell's family once owned, named Bill, who was unknowingly
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when he finds out that
Mitchell was hiding up the tree.
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In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses
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46:and always yearning to fight other roosters.
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480:A Child in the Dark, and a Foreign Father
34:. The sketch is one of many to include
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191:Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1900
20:"Bill, the Ventriloquial Rooster"
389:When I Was King and Other Verses
472:A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek
456:Bill, the Ventriloquial Rooster
1:
613:Short stories by Henry Lawson
397:For Australia and Other Poems
381:Verses, Popular and Humorous
119:"the stepfather of a hiding"
298:The Song of Old Joe Swallow
16:Short story by Henry Lawson
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242:Flag of the Southern Cross
448:The Union Buries Its Dead
523:Joe Wilson and His Mates
491:Short story collections
346:The Never-Never Country
290:The Fire at Ross's Farm
266:Andy's Gone with Cattle
113:Jack Mitchell's father:
440:On the Edge of a Plain
306:Freedom on the Wallaby
250:A Song of the Republic
561:While the Billy Boils
499:While the Billy Boils
354:Scots of the Riverina
330:The Poets of the Tomb
105:"smaller and weaker"
432:The Bush Undertaker
258:Faces in the Street
171:Publication Details
99:Jim, the game-cock:
608:1898 short stories
515:Over the Sliprails
365:Poetry collections
86:Bill, the rooster:
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585:The Drover's Wife
542:Crime in the Bush
424:The Drover's Wife
416:His Father's Mate
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322:The City Bushman
274:The Roaring Days
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182:22 October 1898.
177:First Published:
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44:ventriloquistic
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189:On The Track,
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56:ventriloquist
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36:Jack Mitchell
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577:Three in One
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50:Plot summary
32:Henry Lawson
24:sketch story
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553:Adaptations
338:Saint Peter
602:Categories
70:Characters
60:cock-fight
28:Australian
282:The Teams
225:Works by
180:Bulletin,
186:Source:
40:rooster
30:writer
588:(2021)
580:(1957)
572:(1943)
569:Lawson
564:(1921)
545:(1899)
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139:Quotes
534:Prose
234:Poems
132:Bill.
127:Page:
22:is a
26:by
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218:e
211:t
204:v
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