"From Bondage… Liberated": Frank the Poet's Dreams of Liberty. [abstract]
Jeff Brownrigg
Frances McNamara, "Frank the Poet", remains a shadowy early colonial figure, regardless of his appearances in convict ship indents, the numerous records of his escapes, recapture and court appearances, and the consequent additional punishments. He is best remembered today as the putative author of "Morton Bay" - a poem/song that is a reverie upon escape. But the song's provenance is, at best, vague.
Some other things attributed to Frank are even less secure, though they imply that he was well known and had developed a reputation as poet soon after he arrived in Australia in 1832; he was well enough known to suffer parody.
The body of his work, gathered and annotated by John Meredith and Rex Whalan in 1979 suggest that his wild spirit never lost its distinctive tinge of Irish green and that his rebellious, unsettled spirit was of a piece with his compositions; works that carried encrypted political messages deeply steeped in Irish nationalism and a desire to escape from the overlording British.
This paper examines the poems and songs that are the supposed remnants Frank's literary output, taking issue with the usual conclusion that they sometimes hide coded messages for transported Whiteboys or ribbon men, the tattered Australian remnants of Irish rebellions. Internal evidence suggests something else and the certainties of accounts of his life and output, built in the 1970s, slip away.
Showing posts with label John Meredith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Meredith. Show all posts
McQuade's Curse or MacNamara's Curse?
May Satan, with a rusty crook
Catch every goat in Tallarook;
May Mrs Melton's latest spook
Haunt all old maids in Tallarook;
May China's oldest pig-tailed cook
Spoil chops and steaks in Tallarook;
May all the frogs in Doogalook
Sing every night in Tallarook;
May Reedy Creek create a brook
To swamp the flats in Tallarook;
May rabbits ever find a nook
To breed apace in Tallarook;
May Sin Ye Sun and Sam Ah Fook
Steal all the fowls in Tallarook;
May Ikey Moses make a book
To stiffen sport in Tallarook;
May sirens fair as Lalla Rook
Tempt all old men in Tallarook;
May every paddock yield a shook
Of smutty wheat in Tallarook;
May good St Peter overlook
The good deeds done in Tallarook;
May each Don Juan who forsook
His sweetheart live in Tallarook;
May all who Matthew's pledges took
Get rolling drunk in Tallarook;
May every pigeon breed a rook
To spoil the crops in Tallarook;
May I get ague, gout and fluke
If I drink rum in Tallarook.
Notes
Titled McQuade's Curse this composition was published in Russel Ward's "Penguin Book of Australian Ballads" (1964) with this note:
McQuade's Curse was collected in 1962 though it almost certainly has an ancient folk-lineage. The Curse was pinned to the railway gates in the Victorian town of Tallarook, by a swagman who had been refused a drink of rum on credit at one of the towns hotels. Lalla Rookh was the name of an immensely popular verse-romance by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), and Father Matthew was a celebrated Irish temperance advocate of the same period.
Meredith and Whalan attribute it to Francis MacNamara for reasons of style and because it is a 'parody of The Donerelle Litany'.
Foreword [to Frank the Poet, 1979]
Had he but spar'd his Tongue and Pen,
He might have rose like other Men:
But, Power was never in his Thought:
And, Wealth he valu'd not a Groat:
But, kept the Tenor of his Mind,
To merit well of human Kind.
–Swift.
Whenever two or more Australians discuss folksongs the talk inevitably turns before long to convict songs and convict days and, before much longer, to the mysterious 'Frank the Poet'. For more than a century tradition has held him to have been the true author or composer of Moreton Bay, The Convict's Tour to Hell and other fragments of song and verse so evocative of our beginnings. Yet Frank's identity has remained a mystery. Folk tales suggested that he was an Irish Catholic convict with a pretty wit, and, of course, a gift for versifying; but no-one could be certain that such an individual convict had actually existed. He might himself have been a composite creation of folk memory.
This book, I believe, solves the puzzle. After many years of painstaking research John Meredith and Rex Whalan have run 'Frank the Poet' to earth at last. Their evidence is contained in the pages that follow. 'Frank' was indeed an Irish convict, though probably a Protestant, not a Catholic; and he personally underwent many of the experiences, including repeated floggings, which are reflected in his verses.
As time goes on interest in Australia's beginnings, and in contemporary views of them, can only increase. Frank's life and verse will be of even more concern to Australians a hundred or a thousand years hence, than they are now. The authors of this book have earned the gratitude of posterity.
RUSSEL WARD.
University of New England.
He might have rose like other Men:
But, Power was never in his Thought:
And, Wealth he valu'd not a Groat:
But, kept the Tenor of his Mind,
To merit well of human Kind.
–Swift.
Whenever two or more Australians discuss folksongs the talk inevitably turns before long to convict songs and convict days and, before much longer, to the mysterious 'Frank the Poet'. For more than a century tradition has held him to have been the true author or composer of Moreton Bay, The Convict's Tour to Hell and other fragments of song and verse so evocative of our beginnings. Yet Frank's identity has remained a mystery. Folk tales suggested that he was an Irish Catholic convict with a pretty wit, and, of course, a gift for versifying; but no-one could be certain that such an individual convict had actually existed. He might himself have been a composite creation of folk memory.
This book, I believe, solves the puzzle. After many years of painstaking research John Meredith and Rex Whalan have run 'Frank the Poet' to earth at last. Their evidence is contained in the pages that follow. 'Frank' was indeed an Irish convict, though probably a Protestant, not a Catholic; and he personally underwent many of the experiences, including repeated floggings, which are reflected in his verses.
As time goes on interest in Australia's beginnings, and in contemporary views of them, can only increase. Frank's life and verse will be of even more concern to Australians a hundred or a thousand years hence, than they are now. The authors of this book have earned the gratitude of posterity.
RUSSEL WARD.
University of New England.
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