Mansfield, 1879.
The widely-extended and generally expressed horror and detestation of the police murders which have been displayed through this colony, renders more prominent the sympathy and admiration for the Kellys, that, by the larrikin class, are not only barely disguised in some cases, but openly vaunted in others.
This is more noticeable among the youth in various large centres of population, where, not content with openly avowing their feelings in simple conversation, they congregate occasionally at street corners and elsewhere to sing ballads - hymns of triumph, as it were - in their praise. We have not been informed whether these lyrics have yet taken shape in print, but we have succeeded in obtaining the words of a few by taking them down from dictation.
They are, for the most part, wretched doggerel, void of point as a rule, and in the metre - if metre it can be called - adapted to the universal Irish street-ballad tune, if we except one, which is an attempted parody on the The Bould Sojer Boy.
It seems to us that the majority of them are from the same pen, and we should imagine that the writer would find himself more at home in a "thieves' kitchen', a St. Giles' ballad-mongery, or one of Her Majesty's jails, than at either a missionary meeting or the gathering together of a Young Men's Christian Association - unless, indeed, he attended with the intention of picking the pockets of the audience.
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146mm x 212mm x 4mm