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Now I’m Easy

[Eric Bogle]

June Tabor sang Eric Bogle’s song Now I’m Easy on her 1977 Topic album Ashes and Diamonds. This track was also included in 1990 on her anthology Aspects and in 2005 on her anthology Always. She also sang it on a BBC Radio 1 John Peel session broadcast in February 1978.

Jean Redpath sang Now I’m Easy on her 1990 album Leaving the Land.

Danny Spooner sang Now I’m Easy on his 2007 CD of fairly contemporary Australian songs, Emerging Tradition. He noted:

This moving tale of the hardships experienced by many ‘cocky’ farmers is the work of Eric Bogle. ‘Cocky’ is an abbreviation of cockatoo, a bird which scratches at the ground to get a feed. These farmers were originally granted marginal land near big pastoral stations. Later, returned soldiers, similarly granted land after fighting for their country, found it hard to ‘scratch’ a living from such soil.

Martyn Wyndham-Read sang Now I’m Easy on his 2013 CD Starlit Skies.

Fraser Bruce sang Now I’m Easy in 2020 on his Greentrax CD Every Song’s a Story. He noted:

The term ‘cocky’ was applied to small-time farmers from New Youth Wales who had a pretty rough time trying to make a living from working the dry lands of the country. Eric Bogle wrote this wonderful simple song to express how hard life had been on this one particular man. He, regretfully, would not have been the only farmer in this situation.

Lyrics

Please find the lyrics for this song at Eric Bogle’s website (PDF document).

Sorry, I can't show the lyrics here as I don't have the copyright owners' permission to publish them. But please feel free and ask me to send you the song's lyrics.