G'day Q & Gerry,

Q: your are undoubtedly right in the provenance of the song, almost certainly first seeing light of day on a sheet hawked on the London streets.

Gerry has has a point in claiming a drift to "folk song' status when we find changes in later versions ... but we can't be too positive unless we have evidence of when and where the changes occurred. I guess that we should ask Kate whether she or Gordon made changes to a printed text ... or whether some later form of the text was found in circulation in Australia.

I should also check the late Ron Edwards' two volumes of photocopies of 'Australian / Colonial'-related broadsides and broadsheets ("The Convict Maid" and "The Transport's Lament" - photocopied from the main British collections under an Australia Council grant, back in the 1980s / 1990s.

The first of these will be of interest to one of my Monday Night Sessioners who is putting together a body of work relating to female immigration ... and the notorious "Female Factories" of Sydney and Hobart ... work-houses, originally for newly arrived female convicts ... but, increasingly holding spaces for "refractory female convicts"!

Regards,

Bob