Waltzing Matilda barndance

Written by Christina Rutherford Macpherson.

Played here at 3:04 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hUct9Z64-Q

play video

The above video I came across after looking for a version of this tune to learn, and it’s just wonderful. It’s a simple tune, but I think it sounds great in the key of C Major(in the vide0). The video is 4 different versions of the tune, but the above transcription is from 3:04 - 6:08

Waltzing Matilda is an incredibly popular and well known Bush Ballad orignally written in E Flat Major.

Christina Macpherson transcribed the music, but it goes back much further in time and has its origins in the UK. Christina Macpherson was a close friend of Banjo Patterson who wrote the words while staying at her family’s sheep station. It may be based on something she recalled having heard called the Craigielee March, which is allegedly based on a Robert Tannahill tune called "Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea" . Tunes from back home were frequently borrowed for songs rewritten to suit Australia, so the origins of the music are better researched in the UK than elsewhere.
There is another tune sometimes played instead of this version.

I used to play this finger style on the guitar with something like the following harmony (which makes use of an extensive cycle of fifths in the second part):
|C G|C F|C Am7|Dm7 G|
|C G|C F|C Am7 Dm7|G7 C|
|C C#dim|F#m7-5 B7|Em7 A7|Dm7 G7|
|C C9|F F#dim|C/G Am7 Dm7|G7/B C|

As we know many songs came from Irish reels, this is the original Irish Reel that became Walzing Matilda. It can be found in an ancient manuscript from 1750 titled ‘Paddy Ryan’s Donkey.’

From Wikipedia:

The Australian poet Banjo Paterson wrote the words to "Waltzing Matilda" in January 1895 while staying at Dagworth Station, a sheep and cattle station near Winton in Central West Queensland owned by the Macpherson family. The words were written to a tune played on a zither or autoharp by 31‑year‑old Christina Macpherson, one of the family members at the station.

Macpherson had heard the tune "The Craigielee March" played by a military band while attending the Warrnambool steeplechase horse racing in Victoria in April 1894, and played it back by ear at Dagworth. Paterson decided that the music would be a good piece to set lyrics to, and produced the original version during the rest of his stay at the station and in Winton.

The march was based on the Scottish Celtic folk tune "Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea", written by Robert Tannahill and first published in 1806, with James Barr composing the music in 1818. In the early 1890s it was arranged as "The Craigielee" march music for brass band by Australian composer Thomas Bulch. This tune, in turn, was possibly based on the old melody of "Go to the Devil and Shake Yourself", composed by John Field (1782–1837) sometime before 1812.