Description The Song of Michael Shaughnessy
As I went out walking one November morn
I spied a young damsel, her face was forlorn,
She said, ?I?m an orphan, and barely alive,
So throw me in prison, the better to thrive.
Our crop it was putrid, it turned into slime ?
So I hoped for mercy, and that is my crime.
Now put me in shackles ? I?m sure they will be
More kind than the hunger that?s chafing in me.
And when you arrest me in the name of the Queen,
There?s Dom Ginelly ? he?s aged seventeen ?
Take him in handcuffs for stealing some rope;
He knows transportation is his only hope.
John Austin, Charles Ruddy, why they?re younger still ?
O, say you?ll transport them ? I hope that you will ?
For they quelled their hunger by stealing a sheep,
Both of them foundlings and too weak to weep.
And here?s Owen Eady ? he knows what?s involved ?
For to be a felon he?s firmly resolved.
He?ll gladly choose prison, kind Sir, I repeat,
With chains on his legs and with something to eat.?
Well, I got a letter from Van Diemen?s Land:
?These convicts you sent us ? we can?t understand ?
They?re meek, they?re obedient, they?re callow and scared;
For converse with criminals they?re quite unprepared.?
As I went out walking one morning in June
To view the fair fields and the valleys in bloom,
The corpse by the roadside, she rose and she said,
?You would not arrest me, so now I am dead.?
Lyric by Giles Watson, to the tune of ?Her Mantle So Green?. Michael Shaughnessy was Assistant Barrister in Mayo, an appointee of the Crown. The names listed in the song are those of teenagers whom, in his mercy, he had transported to penal colonies in the Famine years. The name of the girl ? like those of thousands of others ? is unrecorded. The first two lines of the final verse are taken from the traditional Irish song, ?Her Mantle So Green?.
