Title: Moreton Bay
Author: www.traditionalmusic.co.uk
Keywords: Folk,music,songs,lyrics,bluegrass,old-time-music

Traditional & Folk Songs with lyrics & midi music www.traditionalmusic.co.uk 
Moreton Bay 
Moreton Bay 
One Sunday morning, as I went walking, By Brisbane waters I chanced to stray. I heard a pris'ner his fate bewailing While on the sunny river bank he lay.
 "I am a native of Erin's island, But banished now from my native shore; They stole me from my aged parents And from the maiden whom I do adore. 
"I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie, At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains, At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie, At all these settlements I've been in chains.
 But of all the places of condemnation And penal stations in New South Wales, To Moreton Bay I have found no equal; Excessive tyranny each day prevails. 
"For three long years I was beastly treated And heavy irons on my legs I wore. My back with flogging was lacerated And oft-times painted with my crimson gore.
 And many a man from downright starvation Lies mouldering now underneath the clay, And Captain Logan he had us mangled All on the triangles of Moreton Bay. 
"Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews, We were oppressed under Logan's yoke, Till a native black lying there in ambush Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke.
 My fellow pris'ners be exhilarated That all such tyrants like death may find, And when from bondage we are liberated Our former sufferings will fade from mind."
 This text approximates the version printed in Will Lawson's "Australian Bush Songs and Ballads (Sydney, 1944). Captain Patrick Logan was slain by an Aborigine's spear in 1830. By all accounts his fate was deserved; the death rate in his camp exceeded ten percent each year. Moreton Bay, in southern Queensland, was a 
penal colony from 1824 to 1842. RW RW