The Union Buries Its Dead

"The Union Buries Its Dead" is a short story by Henry Lawson in which a young man drowns while fording his horses in the river. Lawson uses the story to satirize the overly romanticized "bush life" and the Union's commitment to respecting its members. Angus and Robertson published the story in the collection While the Billy Boils in 1896.

The first-person narrative opens as the narrator and his party boat on a billabong (a type of lake formed when a river changes course) one Sunday afternoon. A young man is on horseback driving some horses by the bank. He speaks to the party, commenting on the fineness of the day and asking how deep the water is. One of the party jokingly replies that it's "deep enough to drown" the man. The man rides away, laughing.

The next day, the narrator comes upon a funeral at the corner pub in town. The funeral-goers are drinking wine and dancing in the bar parlor as they wait for the hearse. The narrator learns that the dead man is the very same man he and his friends had encountered on horseback the previous day. The deceased, a twenty-five-year-old former Union laborer, had drowned while fording his horses across the Darling River. He was little known in town, and the funeral is only taking place because some Union papers had been discovered among his things. The police had called the General Laborers’ Union to inquire after him and learned that he was a Roman Catholic and not much else.



When the hearse arrives, many of the procession are too drunk to follow it. About fourteen of the procession follow; the narrator muses, "The procession numbered fifteen, fourteen souls following the broken shell of a soul. Perhaps not one of the fourteen possessed a soul any more than the corpse did."

Some of the procession are boarding at the pub. They borrow a small carriage from the landlord for the funeral. One horseman follows the procession looking dusty and bedraggled as though he has just arrived from a long journey. The man leaves the procession when a friend of his motions toward a pub from his hotel veranda.

The rest of the procession walks in pairs. It is a hot, dusty, and wholly uncomfortable endeavor. Some bars close their doors respectfully as the funeral passes. They pass three shearers sitting on a fence. All of them cover their right ears with their hats as a sign of respect, save one very drunk man.



The man walking with the narrator sarcastically quotes Byron, asking "with pathetic humor" whether the deceased's GLU ticket will be recognized in heaven. The consensus from others is that it will. The narrator's friend points out that the dead man is the man from the day before; the two discuss how the last words he would say to anyone were that it was a fine day. The men exchange stories about times that they nearly died.

They finally approach the priest near the cemetery gate. The procession covers their right ear with their hats, and the priest drops his hat to the ground. He sprinkles holy water on the coffin, as the narrator notes, "One or two heathens winced slightly."

A big man grabs the priest's hat and holds it just a few inches over his head, even though the priest is standing in the shade. The priest implores the man to put the hat down, as the ceremony is more important than getting a sunburn. The narrator says the priest "couldn't, as an ignorant and conceited ass, lose such a good opportunity of asserting his faithfulness."



The narrator mentions that the grave looks narrow and recalls a time when a coffin got stuck while being lowered into the grave. The gravedigger has been more careful in this instance and even tries to dull the sound of dirt falling into the hole.

The narrator adds what wasn't present at the funeral: no wattle, no grizzled old mate crying, no Australian sunset, and no saddened ruffian named Bill.

They only know that the dead man's name was James Tyson. He had no personal effects with is belongings. Later, the narrator learns that wasn't his real name, but they used the name Tyson in the newspapers. The narrator later learns his real name. Should anyone come looking for the dead man, they will, unfortunately, keep searching, as the narrator and his friends have already forgotten it.



A prominent theme in the work is the pointlessness of ritual. None of the attendees of the funeral know the man or even his name. They participate in an uncomfortable procession through town to the gravesite simply to put an unknown man in the ground.

Lawson criticizes the overly romantic writing of Bushman life. He makes a point to say that none of the stereotypical things are present: no Australian sunset, Bushman Bill, or crying friend.

Lawson would later say of the story that it is "simply an unornamented description of a funeral that I took part in Bourk. It is true in every detail."