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' In 1979, the then eminence grise of Australian folk music, John Meredith, with his co-researcher Rex Whalan, published what they claimed were the extant literary remains of 'Frank the Poet'. They gathered seventeen items of verse which they attributed to an Irish convict, Francis MacNamara, adding what appears to be a quite thorough investigation of surviving convict records to create a brief biography. Invited to write the foreword, the celebrated historian, Professor Russel Ward, offered a prediction.' (Introduction)
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Epigraph:
So some [convict poets and song-makers] in their quest for a comforter to make their life bearable had found it not in the gods of their fathers, or any dreams of a new race of man, but in truculence towards those who had despitefully used them, or in a wail which came close to a whine, or in a cry of anguish to others of their kind for god's sake not to take the one false step which would lead them to suffering and perdition. - C. M. H. Clark, A History of Australia II: New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land 1822-1838 (1968), p. 177.
Only one very imperfect song has come to hand dealing directly with convict days … all the songs of that day have been mercifully allowed to drift into oblivion…and their singers gone clanking down to the limbo of forgotten things. - A. B. Paterson, Introduction to Old Bush Songs (1905).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Journal of Australian Colonial History
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