28 Feb 99 - 05:06 PM (#60759) Subject: Lyr/Tune Add: SHORES OF BOTANY BAY From: Bob Bolton This is the song The Shores of Botany Bay, which was collected from H.P.C. 'Duke' Tritton in the mid 1950s. The original had 2 verses and a chorus and, sometime later, 'Duke' wrote his own third verse to round it out. The original was published in Singabout magazine vol. 2, #3, p3 - December 1957. The additional verse crept into use within the Bush Music Club and was published in Singabout magazine vol. 3, #2, p17, 1967. A composite version is in my book Singabout - Selected Reprints, Ed. Bob Bolton, Bush Music Club, Sydney, 1985. I presume that the Australian song was taken back to UK in the 1960s, by performers such as Martyn Wyndham-Read, and passed on by something between folk process and osmosis until it took up residence with Irish groups who recognised its Irish ancestry. An intriguing examle of the same process was seen in Mudcat last year in a thread enquiring after a song called Cock of the North. This was not the well-known Scots song but a folk-processed version of Australian Poet Dorothy Hewitt's The Sailor Home from the Sea (starting with the words "Oh, cock of the morning, with a dream in his hand ...") which Martyn always sang as "Oh, cock of the north ..." and we saw some incredible folk-processed changes as more versions were posted, full of substitutions for the Australian geographical and local references that were incomprehensible on the other side of the globe! When The Shores of Botany Bay was published, 'Duke' was quoted as saying that he had heard a song of the same tune, called The Shores of Amerikay. Neither the tune nor the song structure have any resemblance to the various versions I know of The Shores of Amerikay so I must assume that 'Duke' had in mind some other song or a version I have not heard. It does strike me that there are some resemblances to Irish(?) music Hall songs of the American Gold Rush era such as Muirsheen Durkin and perhaps it was one these that led to this song. I have provided the original words from Singabout (as against those that I remembered when I typed them to this thread on Friday ... perhaps another study in the folk process)
The Shores of Botany Bay
Oh, I'm on my way down to the quay, where a big ship now does lay,
MIDI file: SHORESBB.MID Timebase: 240 TimeSig: 2/4 24 8 This program is worth the effort of learning it. To download the March 10 MIDItext 98 software and get instructions on how to use it click here ABC format: X:1
Regards, Bob Bolton |
14 Sep 11 - 10:46 PM (#3223389) Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Add: Shores of Botany Bay From: GUEST,TONY LAVIN First recorded in 1968 by the Wild Colonial Boys on EMI "Glenrowan to the Gulf." I gave the lyrics to the Wolfe Tones in 1975. They never heard it before this date. Tony Lavin |
20 Sep 11 - 10:40 PM (#3226370) Subject: RE: Lyr/Tune Add: Shores of Botany Bay From: Bob Bolton G'day Tony, I need to check my records ... but I seem to remember this as being on the Bush Music Club's 1964 LP ... and that it was after that record that 'Duke' Tritton wrote an extra verse and gave it to Jamie Carlin to give a better length and round out the story. Regards, Bob |