Jim Jones at Botany Bay

DESCRIPTION: The singer, Jim Jones, is taken, tried, and sentenced to transportation. En route, his ship is attacked by pirates, but the crew holds them off. Arriving in Australia, Jones vows to escape, join the bushrangers, and get revenge
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South)
KEYWORDS: outlaw poaching trial transportation pirate
FOUND IN: Australia
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 96, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (1 text)
Paterson/Fahey/Seal-OldBushSongs-CentenaryEdition, pp. 50-52, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (1 text)
Fahey-Eureka-SongsThatMadeAustralia, pp. 28-29, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fahey-PintPotAndBilly, pp. 8-9, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Manifold-PenguinAustralianSongbook, pp. 12-13, "Jim Jones" (1 text, 1 tune)
Anderson-StoryOfAustralianFolksong, pp. 11-12, "Jim Jones" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ward-PenguinBookOfAustralianBallads, pp. 46-46, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (1 text)
Stewart/Keesing-FavoriteAustralianBallads, p. 3, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (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. 161-163, "Jim Jones" (1 text)
Bill Beatty, _A Treasury of Australian Folk Tales & Traditions_, 1960 (I use the 1969 Walkabout Paperbacks edition), pp. 264-265, "Jim Jones" (1 text)
ST PBB096 (Partial)
Roud #5478
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Bold Jack Donahoe" (tune) and references there
NOTES [116 words]: John S. Manifold, Who Wrote the Ballads? Notes on Australian Folksong, Australasian Book Society, 1964, p. 29, says of this song, "the tune to which 'Jim Jones' is sung is Irish, but the words carry none of the political references so common in Irish ballads, and the hero himself comes from England. Since [Jack] Donahue is mentioned as being alive and famous, we might not be far wrong in dating the 'original' of this ballad to 1829 or 1830 -- close, in fact, to the date at which one Jim Jones joined with William Swallow in seizing the colonial brig Cyprus in Recherche Bay! It is just remotely possible that this Jones may have been the original individual composer of this ballad." - RBW
Last updated in version 5.2
File: PBB096

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