The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream of Australia 1901 — Text and Context

Mortuary Verse as Social Commentary

Becke opens with a claim that a mortuary poem about 'Our Emily' was once the 'noblest bit of mortuary verse,' only to be outdone by entries in the Longwood visitors' book. He quotes several, including a French curse ending 'Hudson Lowe est mort!' and an American whaling captain's lines: 'Here lies the warrior, bravest of the brave, / Visited by Miller, God the Queen may save.' Becke's commentary is wry: he praises the 'truly heroic' last line of the French entry and calls the American skipper 'a white man' for not writing something nasty about the British. The piece is less about Napoleon than about the cultural pretensions of visitors and the accidental poetry of their inscriptions. Becke does not analyze the verses deeply; he presents them as curiosities, letting their awkwardness speak for itself. The tone is amused but not mocking, suggesting an appreciation for the earnestness behind the bad rhymes.

Fishing with Flowerpots: Local Knowledge in Mosman's Bay

The longest excerpt details how Becke and other boys caught black bream in Sydney's Mosman's Bay. They learned from aborigines of the Hastings River tribe, who used a 'cunningly devised gear' including a 'large uni-valve aliotis shell.' In Sydney, lacking that, they devised their own method: baiting hooks, burying them in sand, covering each with a flowerpot weighted with a stone, and running tripping-lines ashore. The elaborate setup was to prevent smaller fish, stingrays, and 'Long Tom' from stealing the bait before the black bream arrived. Becke explains that the black bream is 'cute and lordly' and will flee at the sight of a line. The description is precise and practical, showing a deep familiarity with the fish's behavior and the tidal rhythms. The old ex-convict who tended their boat warned them they couldn't catch black bream, but the boys proved him wrong, relying on their own and indigenous knowledge.

Colonial Voices and Unreliable Narrators

Becke's narrative voice shifts between the three pieces. In the first, he is a critic of bad poetry, but his own judgments are ironic—he calls a doggerel couplet 'noble' and praises a French curse as 'heroic.' This playful unreliability suggests he is more interested in the human stories behind the verses than in literary merit. In the fishing piece, the voice becomes earnest and instructional, detailing the method step by step. The contrast highlights Becke's range: he can be both a sardonic observer and a nostalgic memoirist. The catalog subjects label the work 'adventure fiction,' but the excerpts read more like non-fiction sketches. The 'social life and customs' subject fits the fishing piece, which reveals colonial childhood, indigenous teaching, and local ecology. The mortuary piece, however, is about a specific historical site and its visitors, not general Pacific customs.

These three pieces, though brief, offer a glimpse into Louis Becke's colonial world: a place where whaling captains write clumsy verses, boys outsmart fish with flowerpots, and indigenous knowledge is passed on but not always credited. The catalog subjects point to sea stories and adventure, but the actual content is more quotidian—fishing techniques, bad poetry, and local humor. Readers should approach the collection as a set of sketches rather than plotted narratives, and note how Becke's tone shifts from ironic to earnest. The excerpts are incomplete, so the full scope of the second piece, ''Reo,' the Fisherman,' remains unknown.