The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #91745   Message #1749839
Posted By: cobber
30-May-06 - 02:30 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Songs about deportation to Australia.
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Songs about deportation to Australia.
I'd agree that we've made a pretty good list, except I think we missed Maggie May (not the Rod Stewart one)Most of them are music hall songs and often were popular later than the convict era. A bit like the difference between Bing Crosby singing Galway Bay and the wolftones better songs. Of those listed, Jom Jones and Morton Bay stand out because they reflect the defiant attitude of the convicts who could only express it in song. JJ was, I think writtewn by Frank tehPoet around the mid 1830s. He also wrote a poem called The Convict's Tour of Hell which is equally fierce. He was past his convict days when he wrote but obviously remembered the feelings well. Morton Bay details the death of the hated and sadistic Captain Logan who ran Morton Bay gaol which was one of the worst places a convict could be sent. It's thought that his spearing by aborigines may have been related to his work as contact between the black and convict populations was occasionally cordial, a union of the opressed, so to speak.