Said Hanrahan

"Said Hanrahan" is a poem written by the Australian bush poet John O'Brien, the pen name of Roman Catholic priest, Patrick Joseph Hartigan. The poem was first published in 1921 in the anthology Around the Boree Log and Other Verses.

The poem describes the recurrent natural cycle of droughts, floods and bushfires in rural Australia as seen by "Hanrahan", a pessimistic man of Irish descent. "'We'll all be rooned', said Hanrahan"—an adage extracted from the poem—has entered the Australian English lexicon.

The poem starts with the area in the grip of a drought, the worst since "the banks went bad"; a reference to the drought and banking crisis of the early 1890s.

In time, the rains "drummed a homely tune" on "iron roof and window-pane". The problem then changed from drought to flood. "Banker" refers to a watercourse filled from bank to bank, unusual in Australia where many watercourses are ephemeral or only intermittently full.

"In God's good time" the rain stopped and spring arrived with "harvest-hopes immense". The "knee-deep" grass, while good for feeding livestock, brought to mind the risk of bushfire.

The key refrain in the poem is "We'll all be rooned" ("rooned" is a transcription of an Irish Australian pronunciation of "ruined") which has entered the Australian lexicon as a dismissive response to predictions of disasters or hard times, especially those out of the control of the speakers.

SAID HANRAHAN

John O'Brien

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