Even in miserable times, the resilience of the human spirit makes it possible to create music that recalls both good and bad times. The Australian folk song Moreton Bay is about a place where exiles from Ireland… uh, “disembarked”, and is also known as the “Convict’s Lament”.
One Sunday morning as I went walking / By Brisbane waters I chanced to stray,
I heard a convict his fate bewailing / As on the sunny river bank I lay,
I am a native from Erin’s island / But banished now from my native shore,
They stole me from my aged parents / And from the maiden I do adore.
I’ve been a prisoner at Port Macquarie / At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains,
At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie / At all these settlements I’ve been in chains,
But of all places of condemnation / And penal stations in New South Wales,
To Moreton Bay I have found no equal / Excessive tyranny each day prevails.
For three long years I was beastly treated / And heavy irons on my legs I wore,
My back from flogging was lacerated / And oft times painted with my crimson gore,
And many a man from downright starvation / Lies mouldering now underneath the clay,
And Captain Logan he had us mangled / All at the triangles of Moreton Bay.
Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews / We were oppressed under Logan’s yoke,
Till a native black lying there in ambush / Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke,
My fellow prisoners be exhilarated / That all such monsters such a death may find,
And when from bondage we are liberated / Our former sufferings will fade from mind.
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