Donohue was a bushranger who was active in the Hawkesbury region in the 1820s. There are accounts of meetings with him. James T Ryan remembers him coming to his campfire. He recognised him by his speech impediment and his scar but noted that he was ‘the most insignificant looking creature imaginable’ wearing a ‘velveteen coat and vest, cabbage-tree hat, moleskin trousers and blue nankeen short with a heart worked on the breast in white cotton’.  A few days later Donohoe was shot dead.

 

There are also many accounts of performances of the song that was written in Donohue’s honour in pubs in the region during the 1830s. Dan Mayne recalled that in the pubs around Richmond and Windsor: 

Blind Tommie used to have to sing a song entitled "Bold Jack Donohoe." Donohoe, you know, was the bushranger who used to bail people up about Liverpool and Penrith. He had two followers, Walmsley and Webber. But one day, when pursued by the police, these followers deserted Donohoe, leaving him alone to fight three of the police, who, after a desperate encounter, put a couple of bullets into his breast and killed him. The song described the affray, and was a favorite with everybody, particularly the ticket-o'-leave men. I think I can recall the words even yet. 

 

These are the lyrics in the Mayne version:

Come, all you lads of loyalty, a sorrowful tale I'll tell
About a gallant hero who late in action fell;
His name it was Jack Donohoe, of courage and renown,
Who scorned to live in slavery, or humble to the Crown.

On the 21st of August (that being his natal day),
He, with his two comrades, whilst cruising the highway,
Were hailed by three horse police, who called on them to stand.
"Come on! Advance!" said Donohoe, "We'll fight you, man for man!"

He said unto his comrades, "My lads, I hope you're game;
This day you'll have to fight with me; we fight in freedom's name.
You see, there's only three of them, and our number's just the same,
So this day for life and liberty, or we'll die all on the plain.

"Oh, no," said cowardly Walmsley, "those plans we can't fulfil;
Don't you see, there's eight or ten of them advancing on yon hill?
If it comes to an engagement, we will rue it when we meet,
So turn about, come on with us, and we'll beat a quick retreat."

"Begone, you cowardly rascals, I pray begone from me;
If we were but united, we would gain a victory;
But I'll fight them all myself, and to let you plainly see,
I'd rather by their bullet's die than on a gallows tree."

Now the police commenced their firing, when Jack Donohoe did say,
"My curse upon you, traitors, to from me run away."
So one played on the front of him, and another on each side,
Till at length his breast received two balls, and soon the hero died."

 

Ryan, who met Donhue by his campfire recalled that, “A song, made by a local rhymester of the day, ‘The Bold Jack Donahoe’, was sung and torn to pieces in all the low public houses through Sydney, but was at length prohibited in public houses on pain of loss of license.” Mayne also alluded to the illegality of music saying ‘Music was allowed in the hotel bars then, and dancing and singing.’

 

In terms of the tune, Graeme Skinner believes there is no named tune in either source but it fits, serendipitously, the tune of "The Hermit of Killarney" which is also quite clearly a lament (and in major-key lament style of the era), and it alludes to the popular Killarney races and to Ryan's mention of the tune Killarney. This ballad has been printed in John Meredith’s famous book on Australian folk songs, with a different tune (and in fact that tune is found in most 1960s/70s revivalist versions and is perhaps the most well known tune) but when the team performed this in 2023 we used the Hermit of Killarney version.

 

There are stories about music and bushrangers more generally, such as this vivid story:

“about Johnny Gilbert going on to the Forbes racecourse dressed as a woman, and the police didn’t know him, and about the 1000 pounds being on his head; everybody remarking what a fine style of a woman and what a beautiful horse. He told me also what a beautiful singer Johnny was, and many a time when he saw him in the mountains and heard him sing, he used to tell him to shut up or the police would hear him” 

​

Sources:

‘Dan Mayne: His Reminiscences’, National Advocate, 15 July 1911, p 6.

James T Ryan (under the Congomen of “Toby”), Reminiscences of Australia (Sydney: George Robertson and Company, 1894)

Alfred Smith, Some Ups and Downs of an Old Richmondite (Penrith: Nepean Family History Society Inc, 1991)