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.

Articles and reports

Augustus Earle : View from the summit of Mount York, convicts breaking stones [1826]
Courtesy National Library of Australia

Piratical Seizure of The Government Brig Cyprus: Colonial Times (1829)
The Making of the Coracle: Hobart Town Courier (1829)
Cyprus Brig sighting: Sydney Gazette (1829)
Cyprus Brig sighting: Sydney Monitor (1830)
Moreton Bay. Dreadful Treatment Of The Prisoners: Letter to the Sydney Monitor (1830)
Murder of Captain Logan by the Blacks at Moreton Bay Newspaper reports (1830)
John Popjoy and the Cyprus Brig: Bell's Weekly Messenger (1830)
Cyprus Brig trial: Colonial Times (1831)
New Coal Works at Newcastle: Sydney Gazette (1831)
MacNamara's trial in Ireland: Kilkenny Journal (1832)
Moreton Bay: Sydney Monitor (1832)
Frank the Poet's arrival in Sydney: The prisoners by the Eliza are expected ashore this morning. They are all Patlanders to a man; and if they can handle the flail as well as the shillelagh, will prove an acquisition to our farmers. Sydney Gazette (1832)
John Jenkins and Dr. Wardell: Sydney Herald (1834)
An Exile's Lamentation: (1836)
A Dialogue Between two Hibernians at Botany Bay: Sydney Gazzette (1840)
Capture of Bushrangers at foot of Razorback: Sydney Gazette (1842)
Cyprus Brig; in The History of Tasmania: by John West (1845)
Receives ticket-of-leave  Cornwall Chronical (1847)
Receives conditional pardon Cornwall Chronical (1847)
Gains Free Pardon Launceston Examiner (1849)
Convict Songs and Singing in Sydney: by J.C. Byrne (1848)
Frank the Poet Drawings at Robert Burns Inn, Melbourne Daily News (1851)
Frank the Poet at Tambaroora: Report of gold digging, Sydney Morning Herald (1853)
Sudden Death: Report of coroner's finding, Maitland Mercury, Western Post (1861)
Clarke's Creek, Meroo: Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal (1862)
The Day I Will Be Free: C. L. letter to the editor of the Bunyip (1865)
Days of Crime and Years of Suffering: Australasian (1867), Gippsland Times (1898)
Travellers Welcome: South Australian Weekly Chronicle (1891)
The Meddler: Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (1883)
Song of the Stockman: Border Watch (1884)
A Lauriate: by 'Dolphin' Launceston Examiner (1885)
Completion of the Railway to Brisbane: cited by Telemachus, the Argus (1888)
Collecting Bush Songs: Australasian (1889)
Talk on Change: Australasian (1889)
Convict's Grace: Australasian (1889)
Whitley's notes on Frank the Poet: Thomas Whitley (1891)
Frank the Poet exhibit at Victoria Museum (1892)
A Tour of the lower regions Launceston Examiner (1893)
Convict's Tour to Hell: cited by Telemachus in the Oakleigh Leader (1893)
Bolters Out: Daily Telegraph (1895)
The Quirindi Bank Robbery, John Bradshaw (c. 1899) - The Convicts Arrival
A Tour to Hell: published in the Cumberland Times (1900)
Donohue and Frank the Poet: in the Western Champion (Parkes, NSW, 1900)
Paying A Debt: published in the Sydney Stock and Station Journal (1902)
Frank the Poet Manuscript Declined: Sunday Times (Sydney 1903)
A Poetical Prisoner: Published in the World's News (Sydney 1903)
Jack Donohue - By W. Hennessey: Braidwood Dispatch (1903)
Sheep Stealing in Ye Olden Times: Molong Express (1904)
Fragment published in the Sydney Sportsman (1905)
Some Random Reminiscences 1855-1857: by Thomas Whitley (1908)
The Labouring Hoe: Nowra Leader (1910)
Death of Thomas Whitley: Sydney Morning Herald (1912)
Peeps Into the Past: Mudgee Guardian (1916)
Frank the Poet: Scone Advocate (1926)
Calf Family Record sent to Mitchell Library (1928)
CONVICT'S RAILING Gift to Oxley Library of Poem Brisbane Telegraph (1937)
Australia's Growing Tradition - Work in Literature and War: by N.B. (1939)
True Patriots All: Review by Kenneth Porter (1955)
Cyprus Brig: by Bill Wannan, the Argus (1956)
Bolters, Bushrangers & Duffers - Album Notes: by Edgar Waters (1965)
Lloyd Robson Collectors Notes: Australian Tradition (1965)
Foreword to Frank the Poet: by Russel Ward (1979)
Rebels and Radicals (ed.) Eric Fry - 'A Poet in Revolt': John Meredith and Rex Whalan (1983)
Overland: Frank the Poet a postscript: by John Meredith (June 1987)
Overland: The less rebellious Frank the Poet: by Philip Butterss (Oct 1988)
Exiles From Erin (ed.) Bob Reece - 'Frank the Poet': Bob Reece (1991)
The Turning Wave: eds. Vincent Wood and Colleen Z Burke (1991)
The Oxford Companion To Australian Folklore - 'Frank the Poet' by Bob Reece (1993)
The Oxford Companion To Australian Folklore - Folksong making in Australia by Edgar Waters (1993)
A sense of industrial place--the literature of Newcastle by Julian Croft (1999)
Crimes and Punishments: by Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra (2001)
"From Bondage… Liberated": Frank the Poet's Dreams of Liberty by Jeff Brownrigg (2003)

Hell and After: From the anthology introduction by Les Murray (2005)
Bikwell Magazine: Frank the Poet – His Death: by Peter Mara (2008)

100 Australian Poems: review by Perry Middlemiss (2009)
Why Tour To Hell? David Levell, author of Tour To Hell (2009)
Australians: Origins to Eureka: Thomas Keneally (2010)
Italy Under The Southern Cross : Dante Down Under?
Francis MacNamara's A Convict's Tour to Hell by Gino Moliterno (2011)
Banished Now From My Native Shore: Stobie Sounds CD (2012)
ABC Hindsight | Frank the Poet: A Convict's Tour to Hell (2012) [ download transcript ]
(Broadcast 5 and 12 August 2012, 20 January 2013)

[ listen in below ]

RTE OneDocs 23 March 2013
"The Day I Will Be Free" article by Mark Gregory: Quadrant (September 2013)

Phillipe de Vigors : Convicts writing at Cockatoo Island [1 March 1849]
Courtesy State Library NSW

The Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 10 February 1940