Jim Jones at Botany Bay


"Jim Jones at Botany Bay" is a traditional Australian folk ballad dating from the early 19th-century. The narrator, Jim Jones, is found guilty of poaching and sentenced to transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales. En route, his ship is attacked by pirates, but the crew holds them off. When the narrator remarks that he would rather have joined the pirates or indeed drowned at sea than gone to Botany Bay, Jones is reminded by his captors that any mischief will be met with the whip. In the final verse, Jones describes the daily drudgery and degradation of life as a convict in Australia, and dreams of joining the bushrangers and taking revenge on his floggers.
Australian folklorists such as Bill Scott date the song's composition to the years immediately preceding 1830 when bushranger Jack Donahue, who is named in the song, was fatally shot by troopers. The oldest surviving written version of the ballad is found in Old Pioneering Days in the Sunny South, a book of reminiscences by Charles McAlister, a pioneer who drove bullock teams in southern-eastern New South Wales in the 1840s. According to folklorist A. L. Lloyd, "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" may have been lost to history had McAlister not included it in his book.
McAlister said "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" was sung to the tune of "Irish Molly O". Others consider it likely that it was sung to the tune of the Irish rebel song "Skibbereen".

Lyrics

One version of the traditional lyrics is shown below:
Come gather round and listen lads, and hear me tell m' tale

How across the sea from England I was condemned to sail

The jury says, "He's guilty sir", and then says the judge, says he:

"Oh for life, Jim Jones, I'm sending you across the stormy sea

But take a tip before you ship to join the iron gang

Don't be too gay in Botany Bay, or else you'll surely hang

Or else you'll surely hang", says he, "and after that, Jim Jones

High upon the gallows tree the crows will pick your bones

There's no time for mischief there, remember that Jim Jones

Oh they'll flog the poaching out of you down there in Botany Bay"
The wind blew high upon the sea and some pirates come along

But the soldiers in our convict ship, they were a hundred strong

They opened fire and somehow drove that pirate ship away

I'd rather have joined that pirate ship than come to Botany Bay
Now night and day our irons clang and like poor galley-slaves

We toil and strive and when we die, we fill dishonoured graves

But by and by I'll break my chains and to the bush I'll go

And join the brave bushrangers there like Donahue and Co.

And some dark night when everything is quiet in the town,

I'll kill the tyrants one and all, I'll shoot the floggers down

I'll give the law a little shock, remember what I say

And they'll yet regret they sent Jim Jones and in chains to Botany Bay.

Recordings

In popular culture

  • In the computer strategy game Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, the last part of the ballad is used upon faction selection to describe the Free Drones, a labourer faction.
  • In Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti Western-style film The Hateful Eight, condemned outlaw Daisy Domergue sings the song in reference to her captivity, altering "And I'll join the brave bushrangers there, Jack Donahue and Co." to "And you'll be dead behind me John when I get to Mexico". This change is specifically to subtly warn her captor, bounty-hunter John "The Hangman" Ruth, that she, like Jim Jones, is planning her escape from captivity followed by violent revenge against her captors. This performance is available on the film's soundtrack, The Hateful Eight. The Hateful Eight takes place during the Reconstruction Era, several decades after the song is thought to have been written but before it was first published in 1907. It was sung to the tune of Skibbereen.