"Jim Jones at Botany Bay" is a traditional Australian folk ballad first published in 1907. The narrator, Jim Jones, is found guilty of an unnamed crime (although the song refers to "flog the poaching out of you"; Poaching was a transportable offence) and sentenced to transportation. En route, his ship is attacked by pirates, but the crew holds them off. Just when the narrator remarks that he would rather have joined the pirates or indeed drowned at sea than gone to Botany Bay, he is reminded by his captors that any mischief will be met with the whip. The final verse sees the narrator describing the daily drudgery and degradation of life in the penal colony, and dreaming of joining the bushrangers and taking revenge on his floggers.
The ballad was most probably sung to the tune of the old Irish rebel song. Skibbereen (song)|Skibbereen]], Charles MacAlister in his Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South (1907) gives the tune as Irish Molly Oh
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Famous quotes containing the words jones, botany and/or bay:
“Come all you rounders if you want to hear
A story ‘bout a brave engineer;
Casey Jones, that was the rounder’s name
On a heavy eight-wheeler he rode to fame.”
—Unknown. Casey Jones (l. 1–4)
“...some sort of false logic has crept into our schools, for the people whom I have seen doing housework or cooking know nothing of botany or chemistry, and the people who know botany and chemistry do not cook or sweep. The conclusion seems to be, if one knows chemistry she must not cook or do housework.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)