Act became law”. The epithet 'Mad Dog' During his lifetime the bushranger Daniel Morgan was described in many different ways in the colonial press, but ‘mad dog’ was not one of them. The nearest association of the term with Morgan (slight though it is) was in an editorial in the Adelaide newspaper South Australian Register, written in April 1865 on the news of Morgan’s death. The article compares Morgan, who “seemed to commit murder because he enjoyed it”, with other bushrangers such as Gilbert, Hall and Dunn who “only took life when driven to extremities, at which times they appear to have no more compunction in shooting a man than they would have in putting a bullet into a mad dog”. As far as can be determined the epithet ‘Mad Dog’ was first applied to the bushranger in Philippe Mora’s 1976 movie Mad Dog Morgan. A search for references to the phrase “Mad Dog Morgan” in the digitalised Australian newspapers on the Trove online database finds the earliest reference was in August 1975 in an article announcing that Dennis Hopper would be starring in a film “about the Australian bushranger Dan ‘Mad Dog’ Morgan”. Cultural influence The films Dan Morgan (1911) and Mad Dog Morgan (1976) are based on his life and death. Morgan also appeared as a character in the short lived television series Wild Boys, played by Colin Friels Morgan appears as a character in the play Humping the Bluey, or Ransom (1911). His life is fictionalised in Will Dyson's historical novel Red Morgan Rides (1940), and it is likely he was the inspiration for the villainous bushranger "Dan Moran" in Rolf Boldrewood's novel Robbery Under Arms, first published in serial form in 1882. Two biographies have been written about Morgan: Margaret Carnegie's Morgan: The Bold Bushranger (1974), and Edgar F. Penzig's Morgan the Murderer (1989). Banjo Paterson wrote the words of "Waltzing Matilda", Australia's most famous folk song, to a tune played on the zither by the grown Christina Macpherson (who was the infant in the 1865 incident above). Morgan is referenced in the song "Billabong Valley" by Australian psychedelic rock group King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, released on their 2017 album, Flying Microtonal Banana. See also List of serial killers by country References External links "Henty", Sydney Morning Herald'', 17 February 2005 Article and photos of Dan Morgan, State Library of Victoria. 1830 births 1865