G'day Joe,

As I noted above, there are 16 tunes/variants given in John Meredith's The Donahoe Ballads - many from his own collecting work, but he includes those from contemporary collectors (such as Alan Scott) and tunes from older collections of the 19th and early 20th centtury. I can run of MIDI files for all of these (... when I find some of that elusive spare time) and forward them to MMario ... along with full "sheet music" setting, if required ( ... maybe I'll send scans of the settings in the booklet).

Of the 16 tunes, only 13 refer to this "Bold Jack Donahoe / Wild Colonial Boy" group. The first song in the book is credited to Donahoe himself and is completely different - and I've done it as a poem for decades, but when I learned that there was a tune (published in a collection printed in 1895) I got into the habit of singing it.

The second-last song has been represented as a "traditional" song, but I'm sure it was written by Kenneth Cook (who also wrote another song often mistaken for a "folk song": The Cross of the South for his play Stockade, about the rebellion at the Eureka Stockade, on the Victorian Goldfields, 1854) - despite Cook's vague notes and assertions of its 'collected' status).

The last song is a modern song, continuing the Australian fascination with Donahoe. I may be surprised to see what the rest of the world has done to him!

Regards,

Bob Bolton