THE
The emigrant Scottish miners are named in the verses of a poem sent to me by an Australian historian and copied from a cutting from a Scottish newspaper published in1857. The newspaper is not identified. Six verses are introduced with the following preamble:
“Most respectfully inscribed to our old friends, neighbours, and acquaintances, our former employees and worthy managers, in testimony of our lasting respect for them; and as a proof that we are sincere, we shall sing this homely ballad upon the deck of the Forest Monarch, just as we are leaving sight of Old Caledonia.”
Signed
THE SPRINGFIELD EMIGRANT MINERS
Air—The Flowers of the Forest
A farewell to
Our destiny leads us to far distant climes,
And those left behind us, forget, we shall never,
Ingratitude was the blackest of crimes.
Our families, numerous, they shall be with us,
And we, like our sires, shall lead youth by the
hand,
We will make them even in the antipodes,
For the morning is dawning in
The ship Forest Monarch will bear us in safety,
Through clouds, and through tempests, through hail,
winds and rains,
So we sing to the land that we still must hold dearest,
Though few of us ever will see it again.
BISSET, he says that he ne’er can forget it,
RUSSELL and CHERRY, and HOPE are at hand,
BAULD, too, is with us, and DOWNIE declares it,
The Scots shall be Scots, though in Van Diemen’s land.
Farewell to JOHN CROOKSTON, to GEORGE, his
brave
brother,
Those men who would give every workman his hire,
The first is a man, and so is the other,
Both friends whom we exiles shall ever admire,
But DOWNIE is with us to cheer our departure,
He is like out thistle, and knows how to stand,
Close to his friends and fierce to his foemen,
An honour to
Land.
Farewell to old neighbours, old comrades, old
cronies,
Farewell to the village where we dwelt so long,
Farewell to
And when far on the deep we shall this same
song.
But still we request that our shall remember
And think of us too when we are not at hand,
Each year as it rolls brings round its
December,
But or May months await us in
And when we are far on the dark foaming
billows,
And when
And we’ll rhink on
you on our ocean-rocked pillows,
And start from our dreams when no friends are
nigh.
So farewell one and all, oh! Farewell,
As true sons of thine
we shall still take our stand,
………………………………………………….
………………………………………………….
(The last two lines are not in my copy.)
All of the surnames in the verses are of families listed in the 1851 census of Cadder, a parish which included Bishopbriggs. The names Springfield and Firpark appear as street names in Bishopbriggs, and Springfield is given as the name of a modern mansion in the article on Cadder in the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, published about 1893, and as the same article reports that coal and ironstone were mined in that district, the men of Cadder were undoubtedly the Springfield Emigrant Miners of 1857.
The above article is an amended version of one posted in
1999, with an invitation to readers to help me to identify the
Robin
Russell
Encoded e-mail address: <a:rnr1314x@fsmail.net">rnr1314x@fsmail.net</a>
