"Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (Roud 5478) [1] is a traditional Australian folk ballad dating from the early 19th-century. The narrator, Jim Jones, is found guilty of poaching and sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales. En route, his ship is attacked by pirates, but the crew holds them off. When the narrator remarks that he would rather have joined the pirates or indeed drowned at sea than gone to Botany Bay, Jones is reminded by his captors that any mischief will be met with the whip. In the final verse, Jones describes the daily drudgery and degradation of life as a convict in Australia, and dreams of joining the bushrangers (escaped convicts turned outlaws) and taking revenge on his floggers. [2]
Australian folklorists such as Bill Scott date the song's composition to the years immediately preceding 1830 when bushranger Jack Donahue, who is named in the song, was fatally shot by troopers. The oldest surviving written version of the ballad is found in Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South (1907), a book of reminiscences by Charles McAlister, a pioneer who drove bullock teams in southern-eastern New South Wales in the 1840s. According to folklorist A. L. Lloyd, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" may have been lost to history had McAlister not included it in his book. [3]
McAlister said "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" was sung to the tune of "Irish Molly O". [4] Others consider it likely that it was sung to the tune of the Irish rebel song "Skibbereen".
One version of the traditional lyrics is shown below:
Come gather round and listen lads, and hear me tell m' tale
How across the sea from England I was condemned to sail
The jury says, "He's guilty sir", and then says the judge, says he:
"Oh for life, Jim Jones, I'm sending you across the stormy sea
But take a tip before you ship to join the iron gang
Don't be too gay in Botany Bay, or else you'll surely hang
Or else you'll surely hang", says he, "and after that, Jim Jones
High upon the gallows tree the crows will pick your bones
There's no time for mischief there, remember that Jim Jones
Oh they'll flog the poaching out of you down there in Botany Bay"
The wind blew high upon the sea and some pirates come along
But the soldiers in our convict ship, they were a hundred strong
They opened fire and somehow drove that pirate ship away
I'd rather have joined that pirate ship than come to Botany Bay
Now night and day our irons clang and like poor galley-slaves
We toil and strive and when we die, we fill dishonoured graves
But by and by I'll break my chains and to the bush I'll go
And join the brave bushrangers there like Donahue and Co.
And some dark night when everything is quiet in the town,
I'll kill the tyrants one and all, I'll shoot the floggers down
I'll give the law a little shock, remember what I say
And they'll yet regret they sent Jim Jones and in chains to Botany Bay.
