The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #62697   Message #1016174
Posted By: Ian
10-Sep-03 - 07:33 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Moreton Bay (parody)
Subject: Lyr Add: MORETON BAY
Hi again these are from memory
I heard it in Aus in 1980 and liked it
I think I've sung it once in a club since then.

MORETON BAY

As I was walking one morning early,
By Brisbane's waters I chanced to stray.
I overheard a convict, his fate lamenting
As on that sunny bank he lay.

I am a prisoner from Erin's island,
Though banished now from my native shore.
They took me from my aged parents
And from the maiden that I adore.

For three long years I've been beastly treated
And heavy irons on my legs I wore.
My back with flogging was lacerated
And often painted with my crimson gore.

I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie,
At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains,
At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie.
At all those settlements I worked in chains.

But of all those places of condemnation
And penal stations of New South Wales,
To Moreton Bay I have found no equal.
Excessive tyranny each day prevails.

There's many the man from downright starvation
Lies mouldering now underneath the clay.
That Captain Logan, he had us mangled
At the Triangles at Moreton bay.

Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews
We were oppressed under Logan's yoke
Till a native black lying there in ambush
Did deal that tyrant his mortal stroke.

So come, fellow sufferers, be exhilarated
That all such tyrants such fate may find,
And when at last we are liberated
All former sufferings will fade from mind.

I think these are right
The song was written with some flowery language (re Egyptians and Hebrews)
Captain Logan was killed by a native who was possibly paid by the prisoners.

Ian