Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
from To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Preface
- Foreword By John Lucas
- Prologue
- To Tasmania with Mrs Meredith
- At Sea with Mrs Meredith
- What Mr Meredith asked the Ship's Owner about Dick
- Mrs Meredith looks about her
- Mrs Meredith and Hobart Culture
- Mrs Meredith and Hunting
- Flora and Fossil
- Mrs Meredith goes a-Gypsying and enjoys a Barbecue
- The Merediths attend a Ceremony
- Mrs Meredith speaks of the Good Old Days of Privatisation …
- You Rambling Boys of Liverpool
- The Call of the Genes
- Dear Mrs Meredith
- Dear Mr Simpson
- On the Right Side of the Earth
- Epilogue
- Melbourne Central Cemetery
- Select Bibliography
Summary
Oh, Dirty Maggie May,
They have taken you away…
You robbed full many a sailor
Also a couple of whalers
And now you're doing time in Bot'ny Bay.
And not just Maggie Mays never to walk
down Lime Street anymore, but you rambling boys
with your dog, your gun, your snare.
Let's sing it for Jimmy Murphy, Paddy Malone,
the likes of me, poachers, trespassers all,
Mary Johnson too who took the captain's fancy
so's he married her off-hand, hauled out
of salty Liverpool for a-chasing of the game.
Here's a curse on keepers, with their oiled
shot guns and hounds, damn their singular lugholes,
the periwigged beak with his mallet and posh words,
and a curse on this vessel for creaking and tumbling
on the raging sea, the ocean wide — all
for the snap of a rabbit's neck, the squeak
of a pheasant, the rustle of dew-dank fern.
As I lay in the hold one night
A-dreaming all alone
I dreamt I was in Liverpool,
Way back in my old home
With my true love beside me
And a jug of ale in hand,
When I woke quite broken-hearted
Lying off Van Diemen's Land.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cutting the Clouds Towards , pp. 17Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999