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One Man’s Goldfield: the story of the Horseshoe Bend Diggings, William Rigney and Somebody’s Darling

A range of possible origins for these words have been considered over the years.

One option was a poem, entitled "Somebody's Darling" which was published
anonymously in The Western Star, Ireland, on October 15 1864.

The poem is about an unknown boy killed in war and its final lines read:

Carve on the wooden slab,
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Somebody's darling slumbers here.

Over the years the text on the headstone has been the source of some local debate.
The text appears to be burnt into the wood, like poker work, rather than carved as
Rigney stated. The absence of an "s" on the end of Somebody has also led to
suggestions that it is the grave of a Mr Darling, first name unknown.

A careful examination of the headstone reveals a small carved "s" near the "y" of
Somebody's which is quite out of character with the rest of the text. It is slightly cruder
and appears to have been carved or gouged rather than burnt into the wood. Using
the size of this "s" for scale, and its location as a reference point, it is possible to
identify what appear to be some additional remnants of Rigney's original carved text,
now largely obscured by the burnt-on text.

Figure 16 Wooden grave marker showing several generations of text

This conclusion is further supported by the considerable evidence of Rigney's literacy,
not a person to either forget the "s" on Somebody's, or to misplace the apostrophe.

It seems highly likely that the majority of the “Somebody’s Darling Lies Buried Here”
text that appears on the slab is a later “refreshing” of William Rigney's carved text,
carried out at some later date.

The following text is from a letter which appeared in the Mount Benger Mail, under the
nom de guerre "Itinerant", in 1897. The text refers to two visits made by Itinerant to
Horseshoe Bend, the first in 1889 and the second in 1897.

59 Harvie, K. Letter to the Otago Daily Times. Otago Daily Times 10.1.1981

© Jeff Robertson 35