The Bulletin, which was resolutely “anti-imperialist” in its outlook, published a range of verses, ballads and other “poems in which the Middle Ages were represented as despotic and barbaric” (Louise D’Arcens, Old Songs…
This poem, which is best described as “an anti-nostalgic demystification of chivalric heroism” (Louise D’Arcens, Old Songs in the Timeless Land: Medievalism in Australian Literature 1840-1910, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, p.143), draws…