Botany Bay Courtship (The Currency Lasses)

DESCRIPTION: "The Currency Lads may fill their glasses And drink to the health of the Currency Lasses, But the lass I adore... Is a lass in the Female Factory." Having met Molly (who was "tried by the name of Polly"), the two plan marriage
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1832 (SYdney Gazette, July 14, 1832, according to Ingleton)
KEYWORDS: courting Australia punishment robbery drink transportation
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Fahey-Eureka-SongsThatMadeAustralia, pp. 68-69, "The Currency Lasses" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 33-34, "Botany Bay Courtship" (1 text)
Anderson-FarewellToOldEngland, pp. 131-132, "Australian Courtship" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Bill Wannan, _The Australians: Yarns, ballads and legends of the Australian tradition_, 1954 (page references are to the 1988 Penguin edition), pp. 160-161, "Botany Bay Courtship" (1 text)
Geoffrey C. Ingleton, _True Patriots All: or News from Early Australia as told in A Collection of Broadsides_ ("Garnered and Decorated" by Ingleton), Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988, p. 120, "Botany Bay Courtship" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Irish Washerwoman" (tune & meter)
cf. "The Railroad Corral" (tune and references for the "Irish Washerwoman" tune)
NOTES [441 words]: The "Female Factory" was the compound at Parramatta where female immigrants were kept. Settlers were allowed to come in and seek wives. (There was one in Van Dieman's Land as well, but it doesn't seem to have been the one described here.)
The Factory wasn't much of a solution to Australia's problems; fewer than one transportee in six was female, and not all of them were of "marriagable age" (though the authorities eventually started trying to send young women). The women at the Factory, in addition, were those who were not wanted by contractors. Often being sent to a Factory was a punishment for misbehavior in the colonies rather than in Britain (Alexander, pp. 94-95).
According to Murphy, pp. 118-119, in addition to the factory at Parramatta, there were smaller ones at Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania. But the Parramatta Factory housed many more (designed for 1800, and often overpopulated; Hobart did not exceed 900 inhabitants, and Launceston had just 160).
To top it off, the Parramatta Factory was quite a dreadful place, a hall above a prison, not nearly large enough for all the women sent there. Many had to be lodged on the town, and the whole place presented a picture of squalor and, hence, of other vices as the women strove to survive.
A "currency lad" or "currency lass" was a child born in Australia in the colony's early years, and usually illegitimate. The title arose because Australia had very little money, and so turned to odd, makeshift native products. These were collectively called "currency," by contrast to legal British money. Since the children, too, were native products, they were called "currency." This was by contrast to the handful of British-born non-convict landowners, the "Sterling." (for this, see the quote from Baker's The Australian Language quoted Wannan, p. 122).
Murphy, p. 89, says "The expression ['Currency'] was used frequently in the 1820s and 1830s when the native-born population was on the increase, but as they came to predominate in the colonies the description was used less. The expression also carried with it an element of hostility in that the home-grown product had rights to his native land before the immigrant who in some ways was seen as an intruder. As the early Currency lads and lasses were mainly the offspring of convicts, they often avoided occupations that spelt subservience, as agricultural laborers, for instance, or police or military work."
The broadside printed by Ingleton says this was "sung in the Theatre Royal, Sydney, by Mr. Bert Levy, in the character of the Ticket-of-Leave Holder," but no printer is listed, nor is there a name for the play. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.7
File: FaE068

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.