greetings i notice you have two songs in the Digital Tradition Mirror entitled "Van Dieman's Land" Antoon van Diemen was governor of the East Indies in 1642 and ordered Abel Janzoon Tasman to sail around Australia (then called Nieuw Holland) when Tasman sailed past the island now known as Tasmania after him he named it after Governor van Diemen as "Vandiemensland" which was later separated into three words before it was renamed after Tasman it was used as a place to send English convicts until about 1853 when "transportation" as a punishment was abandoned anyway, the correct spelling of the song should be "Van Diemen's Land" apparently, the spelling ending in "-man" came into use after A.L.Lloyd and Ewan MacColl published their album "Off To Sea Once More" by Stinson Records in 1963 and the name was spelled incorrectly on that album sorry to be so pedantic as to worry about spelling but i hope the spelling will be corrected

miriam (cherkassiya@aol.com; folksongcollector.com)