Ok in my copy of Folk Songs Of North America by Alan Lomax it says that the original name was Bold Jack Donahue....

"The Donahue story began in 1823 in Dublin, when Bold Jack was sentenced to be transported to Australia for life for 'intent to commit a felony'. Brought to Austalia in chains, Jack soom bunked out of his convict stockade and turned bushranger. His mates acted as his spies and in return Donahue kept them supplied with rum and tobacco and wrought instant retribution on any planter who oppressed his convicts. The whole colony was kept in an uproar by Donahue's daring robberies until 1830, when the bush police at last surrounded him and shot him down.

His ballad spread like wildfire through the colony-such a focus for popular discontent that soon it became a civil offence to sing it in any public place. Several variant songs thereupon appeared, with precisely the same content but different names for their heroes. One of these ballads, The Wild Colonial Boy, can be heard today in Irish pubs round the world. The original ballad, meanwhile, took refuge in America, where fishermen, lumberjacks, and cowboys kept the bold bushranger's memory green."

That was excerpted from the aforementioned book....here is the link to Bold Jack located in the Digitrad...Bold Jack Donahue

Amergin