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Convict Maid 
Convict Maid 
Ye London maids attend to me While I relate my misery Through London streets I oft have strayed But now I am a Convict Maid 
In innocence I once did live In all the joy that peace could give But sin my youthful heart betrayed And now I am a Convict Maid 
To wed my lover I did try To take my master's property So all my guilt was soon displayed And I became a Convict Maid 
Then I was soon to prison sent To wait in fear my punishment When at the bar I stood dismayed Since doomed to be a Convict Maid 
At lenth the Judge did me address Which filled with pain my aching breast To Botany Bay you will be conveyed For seven years a Convict Maid 
For seven long years oh how I sighed While my poor mother loudly cried My lover wept and thus he said May God be with my Convict Maid 
To you that here my mournful tale I cannot half my grief reveal No sorrow yet has been portrayed Like that of the poor Convict Maid 
Far from my friends and home so dear My punishment is most severe My woe is great and I'm afraid That I shall die a Convict Maid 
I toil each day in greaf and pain 
And sleepless through the night remain My constant toils are unrepaid And wretched is the Convict Maid 
Oh could I but once more be free I'd never again a captive be But I would seek some honest trade And never become a Convict Maid 
From Butterss & Webby Penguin Book of Australian Ballads where the song is called 'The London Convict Maid' with the note: "From a broadside in the Mitchell Library. Printed by Birt, 39 Great St. Andrew Street, Seven Dials". This tune is a variant of the Irish song from 1788 rebellion, 'The Croppy Boy', a tune also used for the British ballad 'McCaffery'.
 Nearly 25,000 women were transported to Australia as convicts, half of them from Ireland. Convicts themselves were often defiant rather than repentent, as in the case of the Irish woman who on being sentenced in a Belfast court to a further term of transportation shouted "Hurrah for Sydney and the sky above her!" MG apr97