Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a cockade [the cockades worn by the atheistic French revolutionaries].

1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

2. (Aus., also curse, curse of Cain) the bundle or pack carried by an itinerant worker or tramp.

1899		Morn. Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld) 25 Sept. 3/4: This miscellaneous assortment when compactly rolled up in a cylindrical shape [...] ‘nosebag,’ he denominates indifferently a ‘drum,’ a ‘bluey,’ ‘the curse,’ or, satirically, a ‘little parcel,’ or affectionately ‘Matilda’.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 53: CURSE-O-GOD bush a slang name for a swag: this appears to be the work of some bushmen who has [sic] read Bunyan’s Pilgrim [sic] Progress. [...] ‘Humping the Curse-o-God’ is a very apt way of describing swagging.
1921		Smith’s Weekly (Sydney) 10 Dec. 17/4: A few swag aliases:– Matilda, the drum, bluey, white man’s burden, and Curse of Cain [AND].
1926		Bulletin (Sydney) 18 Nov. 22/4: An old swaggie with the curse o’ God on his shoulders called at our place and asked for a bit of tucker.
1939		Bulletin 22 Feb. 21/1: We overtook a genuine old-style swaggie, neatly-rolled ‘Curse o’ Gawd’ slung over left shoulder by a towel [...] and fly-corks dancing from hatbrim.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 102: A drum, of course, is the equivalent of swag, bundle, curse, matilda, shiralee, parcel, turkey, donkey, national debt or bluey as the tramp’s rolled blanket is variously called.
1950		Bulletin 26 July 12/1: Humping the curse near Bunbury (W.A.), the Count and I found a pick and shovel.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 234/2: The man on the move devised numerous names for the bluey and its contents: swag, knot, tilda, curse, bag, matilda, etc. and when on the tramp he was variously described as humping the bluey, carrying the knot, waltzing matilda, carrying the tilda, humping the hot, humping the curse, etc.
1965		R.H. Conquest Horses in Kitchen 44: With the coming of the hoboes in their thousands such picturesque phrases as ‘waltzing matilda’ and ‘humping bluey’ – not forgetting ‘the curse of Cain’ to define a swag – vanished from our language.

3. see curse, the n.¹