The Convict Maid

Original Track ID

SA1952.09.A7

Original Tape ID

SA1952.009

Summary

The song describes the fate of a Glasgow girl who stole her master's property for her lover, was caught, and was sentenced to be transported for seven years. Her mother and father wept and her lover asked Heaven to protect her. She vows that if she survives she will lead an honest life.

Mr Hay learned the song from Jean Lobban, a Turriff woman, while harvesting at Inverichnie Farm, the summer after he learned 'The Highlandman's Toast', c. 1901. Mr Hay was generally a cattleman.

Item Notes

Text and music transcribed in School of Scottish Studies. 5 verses.

The 'Penguin Book of Australian Ballads' (Butterss & Webby), where the song is called 'The London Convict Maid', provides the note: "From a broadside in the Mitchell Library. Printed by Birt, 39 Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials." This tune is a variant of the Irish song from the 1788 rebellion, 'The Croppy Boy', a tune also used for the British ballad 'McCaffery'. Nearly 25,000 women were transported to Australia as convicts, half of them from Ireland. Convicts themselves were often defiant rather than repentant, as in the case of the Irish woman who on being sentenced in a Belfast court to a further term of transportation shouted, "Hurrah for Sydney and the sky above her!"

'The Highlandman's Toast' is sung on an earlier track on the same tape (SA1952.009).

Recording Location

Language

Scots

Genre

Song Information

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R5479

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good