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“Folkalising” convicts: a “Botany Bay” ballad and its cultural contexts

2013; Routledge; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14443058.2013.849278

1835-6419

Nathan Garvey,

Digital Humanities and Scholarship

AbstractWidespread interest in Australian folklore and folk music began in the 1950s as a response to the international popularity of the folk revival, led principally by American and British artists and organisations. In revising their own folk traditions, Australian scholars looked to the convict era as an important foundation for the “bush music” that was to follow. Yet, the evidential basis for the oral transmission of convict ballads has been remarkably slim. This essay considers the case of one well-known convict ballad, exploring its evolution through British print culture and its transformation into a “folk” song in the twentieth century.Keywords: Australian folkloreprint cultureconvict historypopular theatreballads Notes1. See Ron Edwards, The Convict Maid: Early Broadsides Relating to Australia (Kuranda, Qld: Rams Skull Press, 1985), 32. The evidential basis on which this claim rests is thin, but the high rate of survival of numerous different versions of “Van Diemen's Land” – and other transportation ballads – does provide some indication of their popularity.2. Several of the poems of Francis MacNamara (c.1810–61) were remembered by fellow prisoners and collected and transcribed at a later time, though manuscripts in MacNamara's own hand also survive. See John Meredith and Rex Whalan, Frank the Poet: The Life and Works of Francis MacNamara (Melbourne: Red Rooster Press, 1979).3. As Elizabeth Webby has pointed out, the vast distances that the numerous and often expensive materials and paraphernalia involved in printing – presses, paper, ink, type – had to be shipped, made local productions at least twice as expensive as imported books and magazines. These conditions, along with a relatively small population spread over a large geographic area, were ill-suited to the broadside trade, which relied on the production of large quantities of cheap works for rapid sale. See Webby, “Writers, Printers, Readers: The Production of Australian Literature Before 1855,” The Penguin New Literary History of Australia special issue of Australian Literary Studies 13.4 (1988): 114.4. Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1978), 49. The story Ward cites is from the Bulletin, March 10, 1888, 14.5. John Manifold, Who Wrote the Ballads? Notes on Australian Folksong (Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1964), 24.6. Warren Fahey, “Oh Son, Oh, Son, What Have You Done, to be Bound for Botany Bay?” in Old Bush Songs: The Centenary Edition of Banjo Paterson's Classic Collection, ed. Warren Fahey and Graeme Seal (Sydney: ABC books, 2005), 46.7. Fahey, “Banjo Paterson and the Old Bush Songs,” in Fahey and Seal, Old Bush Songs, 22.8. Hugh Anderson, The Story of Australian Folksong, rev. ed. [of Colonial Ballads, 1955] (Melbourne: Hill of Content, 1970), 4.9. A.B. Paterson, Preface, Old Bush Songs: Composed and Sung in the Bushranging, Digging, and Overlanding Days (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1905), v. Significantly, no convict ballads were included in Paterson's selection.10. See, for example, John Dempsey, “Our Forgotten Folk Music,” Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 1952, Saturday Magazine, 7a–g.11. See Keith McKenry, “Percy Jones: Australia's Reluctant Folklorist,” Overland no. 186 (2007): 30–31. For the postwar folk revival in other national contexts, see Dick Weissman, Which Side Are You On? An Inside History of the Folk Music Revival in America (New York: Coninuum, 2005) and Michael Brocken, The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).12. “Boosting Our Own Books,” Sunday Herald, June 1, 1952, 11a–e.13. Ainworth's Jack Sheppard, serialised in Bentley's Miscellany through 1839–40 with illustrations by George Cruickshank and first issued in book form by Bentley in October 1839, was republished numerous times through the nineteenth century and spawned a string of stage adaptations. Ainsworth's treatment of Jack Sheppard as a “rogue-hero” was controversial, and many of the stage adaptations of the work were banned after the notorious 1840 murder of Lord William Russell by his valet Courvoisier, who reportedly claimed to have been inspired to murder by reading the novel. Buckstone's play, first performed at the Adelphi in October 1839, was one of only two “Jack Sheppard” plays to obtain a licence. See Matthew Buckley, “Sensations of Celebrity: Jack Sheppard and the Mass Audience,” Victorian Studies 44.3 (2002): 423–63; J.R. Stephens, “Jack Sheppard and the Licensers: The Case Against Newgate Plays,” Nineteenth Century Theatre Research 1 (1973): 1–13; and Derek Forbes, “‘Jack Sheppard’ Plays and the Influence of Cruikshank,” Theatre Notebook: A Journal of the History and Technique of the British Theatre 55.2 (2001): 98–123.14. See Times, December 28, 1885, 8b–c; Daily Mail, December 28, 1885, 2c–d; Pall Mall Gazette, December 29, 1885, 4a–b; Theatre, January 1, 1886, 44–46, 2c–d; Era, January 2, 1886, 7b–c; Graphic, January 2, 1886, 7b; Athenæum, January 2, 1886, 43b–c; Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, January 3, 1886, 7a–b; Era, April 10, 1886, 8e.15. Performances were staged at Brighton, Leicester, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Scarborough, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield, Dublin, Liverpool, and Bristol. See Era May 29, 1886, 14a; July 24, 1886, 14d; July 31, 1886, 6e; Era August 9; August 22, 1886; August 30, 1886.16. New York Times, September 14, 1886, 4f–g; September 24, 1886, 4g; December 9, 1886, 7g; April 17, 1887, 2e.17. Argus, December 24, 1886, 8c; also Argus, December 25,1886, 12f.18. Argus, December 28, 1886, 8c–f; Age, January 8, 1887, 9c; Argus, January 8, 1887, 9g; January 10, 1887, 5d; January 27, 1887, 4b; January 29, 1887, 9d–e; February 25, 1887, 9c.19. Bulletin, June 4, 1887, 7b. See also the positive reviews in the Sydney Morning Herald, May 30, 1887, 8e; the Sydney Mail, June 4, 1887, 1186b; Town and Country Journal, June 4, 1887, 1172b–c.20. Williamstown Chronicle, March 5, 1892, 2h.21. Brisbane Courier, January 13, 1893, 6c.22. Sydney Morning Herald, October 20, 1894, 7e; April 6, 1895, 7h; Coburg Leader, November 24, 1894, 2h; Morning Bulletin, August 20, 1895, 5b; Northern Miner, September 19, 1895, 1e; West Australian, April 23, 1898, 6b.23. “Nix My Dolly Pals” became a huge popular hit, see Buckley, “Sensations of Celebrity,” 427.24. Pall Mall Gazette, December 29, 1885, 4a–b.25. Era, April 10, 1886, 8e; Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, August 13, 1887, 5d.26. Yorkshire Herald, October 1, 1890, 6e; Western Mail, September 2, 1890, 5e.27. Era, January 7, 1888, 14d; Era, October 25, 1890, 16a.28. Era, January 2, 1886, 7c. The “evening contemporary” was probably the Pall Mall Gazette, which quoted sections of “Botany Bay” in its review of December 29, 1885 (4a–b) (cited above).29. Era, January 7, 1888, 14d.30. In conjunction with this paper, I have revised and updated the AustLit record for the ballad (using the primary title “Justices and Old Bailey”, giving facsimiles and linking to digital archives where appropriate, and showing from whence modern editors have drawn their sources. See “Justices and Old Bailey,” Austlit: The Australian Literature Resource, last updated March 31, 2012, http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowWork&workId=C2Qc.31. A version published in a late nineteenth-century anthology has an alternative first line, “Here's bad luck to you, Mr. Justice Paley”, but the source of this version is not known. See John Ashton, ed., Modern Street Ballads (London: Chatto & Windus, 1888), 364–65.32. M.R. Perkin, ed., The Book Trade in Liverpool from 1806 to 1850: A Directory (Liverpool: Liverpool Bibliographical Society, 1987), 6.33. Steve Roud and Paul Smith, eds., A Catalogue of Songs and Song Books Printed and Published by James Catnach 1832: A Facsimile Reprint with Indexes and Examples (West Stockwith: January Books, c1985), 46.34. Willam B. Todd, comp., A Directory of Printers and Others in Allied Trades, London & Vicinity 1800–1840 (London: Printing Historical Society, 1972), 19.35. Charles Gavan Duffy (1816–1903) represented New Ross in the House of Commons from 1852 to 1855 before emigrating to Australia, where he became a prominent barrister and statesman in Victoria. The Trinity College, Dublin edition of the ballad is printed on a sheet also containing this ballad, while the two copies in the British Library (806.k.16/11 and 806.k.16/8) are printed alongside a different ballad: “A New Song, called the Discussion between Paddy and Peggy on the Corn-laws”.36. For a facsimile and transcription, see Edwards, The Convict Maid, Part Two: The Transport's Lament (Kuranda, Qld: Rams Skull Press, 1988), 57. Edwards points out that punishment for inappropriately “courting” the gentry was a familiar theme in broadsides (though the crime is less well represented among actual court records).37. It was also a trade in which women traditionally had high rates of participation. See Paula MacDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1998), 58, also 58–62, 71. For the increasingly “shameful” status of the English street singer through modernity, see Andrew Rouse, “The Forgotten Professional Popular Singer in England,” Studia Musicologica Academiæ Scientiarum Hungaricæ 40.1 (1999): 152–54.38. First published in the Morning Chronicle from 1849 to1850, Mayhew's articles were gathered in his London Labour and the London Poor, 3 vols, 1851–52 and republished with an additional fourth volume in 1861. For the extensive section on street literature (which amounts to more than 100,000 words on its own), see London Labour and the London Poor; A Cyclopædia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those That Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work: The London Street Folk, vol. 1 (London: Griffith, Bohn and Co., 1861), 213–323.39. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1, 220.40. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1, 220.41. Era, January 2, 1886, 7c.42. Jerrold, “Perditus Mutton; Who Bought a “Caul,” New Monthly Magazine 50.20 (August 1837): 552; and Penny Satirist no. 19, August 26, 1837, 4a.43. Printers’ dates of activity here have been extracted principally from the University of Birmingham's British Book Trade Index (http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk) and cross-referenced with sources such as Todd (q.v.) and Ian Maxted's Exeter Working Papers in Book History (http://bookhistory.blogspot.com.au).44. Oxford's Bodleian Library (abbreviated as Bod. in this table) hosts a digital archive and catalogue of its broadside ballad holdings (www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads), which include nine different versions of this ballad. I have used the digital versions of the ballads for this article.45. Cambridge University Library holds the Madden Collection of ballads, which contains nine different versions of the ballad. I have used the microfilm version of this collection (Madden Ballads, Woodbridge, Conn.: Research Publications, 1987, 12 microfilm reels).46. The British Library (BL) holds one version of the ballad as “Justices and Old Baileys” in the Sabine Baring-Gould collection (L.R.271.a.2, Vol.8, fo. 28) and two copies under the title “The Newry Transport”.47. Mitchell Library, MRB/27. This, notably, is the only copy of the ballad held in an Australian library.48. Middlebury College [Vermont] Library, Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection, 427. A digitised version is available: http://middarchive.middlebury.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/flanders/id/366.49. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, fREng BALLADS 18– vol. 1.50. National Library of Scotland, RB.m.93 (71).51. Trinity College, Dublin, OLS X-1-531 no.14.52. Jerrold, “Perditus Mutton,” 553.53. Jerrold, “Perditus Mutton,” 553.54 Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), 129–56. See also Greg Dart, “‘Flash Style’: Pierce Egan and Literary London, 1820–28,” History Workshop Journal 51 (2001): 180–205.55. A single-sheet, eight-page pamphlet in small quarto format, The Merry Songster bears the imprint “Printed and Sold in Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, London” and was thus the production of the most famous and prolific publishers of eighteenth-century cheap print, Cluer Dicey and Richard Marshall. According to the English Short Title Catalogue (http://estc.bl.uk), the only extant copy of this work survives in the British Library (BL 11621.e.6); the BL catalogue estimates its date as 1770?, but in fact, it appears on the Marshall-Dicey trade catalogue of 1764, where such eight-page songsters were advertised to chapmen for eight shillings by the ream (see The Marshall-Dicey Catalogue, University of Birmingham, http://www.diceyandmarshall.bham.ac.uk/).56. A single-sheet, eight-page pamphlet in octavo format, The Constant Lass's Garland bears only the imprint “Licensed and Entered according to Order”. The British Library holds three copies of this work, two of which (BL 11621.c.2.6 and 11621.c.3.37) were produced from the same typesetting, while the third is a different, probably later, edition: The Constant Lass's Garland; Beautified with Several Merry New Songs (BL 11621.b.60.16). The British Library catalogue estimates the date of the work at 1770; the versions at 11621.c.1 and 2 are bound in large collections of garlands printed in an identical manner, some of which, such as Lord Granby's Garland and The Havannah's Garland, are clearly related to events of the 1760s. One of the volumes (11621.c.2) contains an interpolated leaf, which reads in part: “The old garlands in these volumes are printed by J. White, who died in 1769, and by T. Saint, who died in 1788.” The provenance note also explains that the owner's father had purchased the volumes “some years since from Charnley of Newcastle”. Thomas Saint was a journeyman printer and eventual partner (from 1763) and successor (1769) of John White, who had traded as a printer in Newcastle since 1711. The Charnley family were a leading bookselling dynasty in the northeast of England through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See C.J. Hunt, The Book Trade in Northumberland and Durham to 1860 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Thorne's Student's Bookshop, 1975), 21–23, 81, 95.57. “The Pretty Sweet Sailor,” in The Merry Songster, 7.58. “The Pretty Sweet Sailor,” in The Merry Songster, 7.59. “The True Lovers Lamentation at Parting,” in The Constant Lass's Garland, 2–3.60. “The True Lovers Lamentation at Parting,” in The Constant Lass's Garland, 2–3.61. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 340–45.62. “The Two Lymas Lovers: Thomas and Betty. Set forth in a Dialogue between them at his Departure.” The imprint at the end of the ballad reads: “Printed by J. Deacon, at the Angel in Guilt-spur-street, without Newgate [London].” Two witnesses of this ballad survive: one in the Pepys collection (Cambridge) and one in the Bodleian ballad collection. They were presumably printed between 1685 and 1688 – this was the term of the licensor, Richard Pocock, whose authorisation of the ballad appears in the imprint.63. Simpson, The English Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1966), x. See also Angela McShane, “‘Ne sutor ultra crepidam’: Political Cobblers and Broadside Ballads in Late Seventeenth-Century England,” in Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800, ed. Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 210.64. Simpson, The English Broadside Ballad, xi.65. “Oh So Ungrateful a Creature” was actually the first line of the ballad, which in print was entitled “The Mistaken Lover: or, The Supposed Ungrateful Creature, Appears a true Pattern of Loyalty.” See Bodleian Douce Ballads 2 (146b). The “Oh So Ungrateful a Creature” tune was used for a number of ballads printed around this time. See James Crawford, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: A Catalogue of a Collection of English Ballads of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, Printed for the most part in Blackletter, vol. 2, 1890 (New York: B. Franklin, 1961), 614, 678. See also Simpson, The English Broadside Ballad, 403–4.66. “The Two Lymas Lovers,” lines 37–40.67. J.B. Buckstone, Jack Sheppard: A Drama in Four Acts (New York: Samuel French, 1853), 14. The phrase is not used in Ainsworth's novel. Eric Partridge traced the term to 1709 (Paul Beale, ed., A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 8th ed. (London: Routledge, 2002, 1379)).68. G.A. Sala, “Robson,” Atlantic Monthly 13.80 (June 1864), 718.69. Peter Bailey, “Conspiracies of Meaning: Music-Hall and the Knowingness of Popular Culture,” Past and Present 144 (1994): 138.70. The text of “Botany Bay” here is taken from Selection of Words and Music from Little Jack Shepherd, 42–44. For the “warning” motif in transportation ballads, see especially Philip Butterss, “Australian Ballads: The Social Function of British and Irish Transportation Broadsides, Popular Convict Verse and Goldfields Songs” (PhD Diss., University of Sydney, 1989), 31–74.71. Phil Eva, “Home Sweet Home?: The ‘Culture of Exile’ in Mid-Victorian Popular Song,” Popular Music 16.2 (1997): 132, and 131–50.72. See especially the obituary of Royce published in the Argus (January 27, 1926, 23e).73. See Sydney Morning Herald, December 28,1887, 8c. See also Argus, December 25, 1886, 9a; Sydney Morning Herald, June 20, 1887, 8a; June 27, 1887, 5a; July 2, 1887, 13c.74. Sydney Morning Herald, June 8, 1887, 11a; June 18, 1887, 12e; June 20, 1887, 8c; September 21, 1888, 5d.75. Henry Lawson, “City Bushman,” Bulletin, August 6, 1892, 5. Thanks to Peter Kirkpatrick for originally alerting me to Lawson's reference to the song.76. See especially Mark Horgan and Michael Sharkey, “Vision Splendid or Sandy Blight?: The Paterson-Lawson Debate,” in The 1890s: Australian Literature and Literary Culture, ed. Ken Stewart (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 66–94.77. Copyrighted in 1939, the anthology was part of Allan's Popular Song Books series and appears to have remained in print through the 1940s. The advertisement for the anthology printed on the back cover of Allan's Popular Song Books described its contents as “120 of most famous old songs—Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Darkey. Many favourites of the 'nineties. Wonderful value.” A digitised version of the anthology is available from the State Library of Victoria, http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/151639.78. The Chauvel Collection, Canberra: National Film and Sound Archive, 1994, Videocassette (VHS), 90mins. I am indebted to Elizabeth Webby for pointing out the use of the song in Chauvel's film.79. Douglas Stewart and Nancy Keesing, eds., Old Bush Songs and Rhymes of Colonial Times. Enlarged and Revised from the Collection of A. B. Patterson [sic]. ([1957] Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1976), 16. The Sydney Golden Songster, of which a single copy survives in the Mitchell Library, was the first Australian printing of the text of “Botany Bay”. The song was included in the anthology under the title “Too-Ral, Li-Ooral, Li-Additty: Or, There's Nothing in England We Cares About. As Sung in Little Jack Sheppard”. The text of the song given here contains an additional verse, not present in the earlier British published version (or in the later text used by Burl Ives), possibly added for the Australian production: For fourteen long years I have ser-vi-ed,And for fourteen long years and a day,For meeting a bloke in the area,And sneaking his ticker away. 80. See, for example, Russell Ward, ed., Penguin Book of Australian Ballads (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), 28–30; W.N. Walker, ed., Old Australian Ballads: An Anthology (Sydney: School Projects, 1967), 7–8; Australian Folk Songs and Bush Ballads: Over 100 Traditional and Popular Songs Celebrating Australia (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2010).81. See, for example, user raymondcrooke's video and text introduction, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAvMp6oq, uploaded May 24, 2007, or that of user threelegsoman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEAvMp6oq_U, uploaded May 1, 2009.82. Kinsella, ed., Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (Melbourne: Penguin, 2009), 73. Another recent anthology follows the 1930s attribution of the work to “Florian Pascal” – see Richard Walsh, ed., Traditional Australian Verse: The Essential Collection (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009), 6–7.83. See, for example, St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, MacDowell, Gatrell, etc. The fact that previous generations of folklore scholars tended to subscribe to a hierarchy of value, which saw printed manifestation of songs and ballads as debased versions of an ideal (oral) form, has been noted by these scholars.84. Fumertson and Guerrini, eds, 35–56.85. John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, Folk Songs of Australia: And the Men and Women Who Sang Them (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1973), 7.86. Meredith and Anderson, Folk Songs of Australia, 36–37.87. Ron Edwards, The Overlander Songbook ([1956] Adelaide: Rigby, 1971), 10–11.88. “Bush Songs and Music,” Australian Government website, last updated March 1, 2011, http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/bush-songs-and-music.89. McKenry, “The Great Australian Folk Song That Wasn't,” Quadrant 53.3 (2009): 30–36.90. Waltzing Matilda was released in Australia on 28 April, 2008, on Rieu's private label Andre Rieu Productions. Clips of the Melbourne performance of “Botany Bay” are available on Youtube (see, e.g., ClassicalRelated, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gbKoXry4d8, uploaded January 7, 2009).91. The Herd, Summerland, CD, LP and digital formats, Elefant Traks, 2008.92. Ives, “What Is A Folk Song?,” Music Journal 18.2 (1960): 10 [emphasis added].