Edmund Blunden, "The Bonadventure" (London: Richard Cobden-Sanderson, 1922), p. 111 [ref. to 1921]:

“Every now and then, in his consultations, he [Mead, the third mate] would break forth into singing, but seldom more than a fragment at a time; now it was "Farewell and adieu to you, bright Spanish Ladies" — a grand old tune — now "Six men dancing on the dead man's chest." But most, he gave in honour of his native Australia a ballad of a monitory sort with a wild yet sweet refrain. It began

I was born in the city of Sydney,
And I was an apprentice bound,
And many's the good old time I've had
In that dear old Southern town.

The apprentice fell in with a dark lady — indeed "she came tripping right into his way." It was an unfortunate encounter. He became her "darling flash boy." He could readily put the case against her when, as receiver of stolen goods, he had served some years in jail; and then, like the author of George Barnwell, he addressed apprentices on the subject :

So all young men take a warning and
Beware of that black velvet tie.

But yet, and here was the charm of the ballad, and the token of his entanglement by Neaera's hair, ever and anon came the burden

For her eyes they shone like the diamonds,
I thought her a Queen of the land,
And the hair that hung over her shoulders was
Tied up with a black velvet band.

When Mead later on gave me a copy of this song, which I shall not forget, duly set out in "cantos," he was good enough to ornament it with a little picture of the black bow as tailpiece.”

[Blunden is well known as a poet and memoirist of World War I.]