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Isle of France / Ile de France

[ Roud 1575 ; Ballad Index PASB024 ; trad.]

Isle of France (i.e. Mauritius) is a ballad about a convict being shipwrecked on the way back home from his transportation sentence. Nic Jones recorded it for his 1977 album The Noah's Ark Trap. In 1981, Martyn Wyndham-Read sang this song as The Ile de France on his album Emu Plains—on which he was accompanied by Nic Jones playing the fiddle. A.L. Lloyd commented in the latter album's sleeve notes:

One of the many songs of the transportation of convicts to the penal settlements of New South Wales or Tasmania in the earlier years of the nineteenth century. This one is different from most in that the convicted man has finished his sentence and is shipwrecked on his way home. The song has every appearance of being made in Ireland rather than in Australia, and was known on this side of the world, appearing in W. Percy Merrick's Folk Songs from Sussex (1912). Other versions have turned up in Somerset and Yorkshire (Leeds). This set—or or the tune and the opening verse—was collected by Ron Edwards in Cairne, Queensland. Martyn got it from Edwards' Big Book of Australian Folksong, a grand book published in 1976.

John Wesley Harding also sang this song on his Nic Jones tribute album, Trad Arr Jones.

Jackoe Oates recorded Isle of France in 2009 for her album Hyperboreans.

Lyrics

Oh the sky was dark and the night advanced
When a convict came to the Isle of France;
And round his leg was a ring and chain
And his country was of the Shamrock Green.

“I'm from the Shamrock,“ this convict cried,
“That has been tossed on the ocean wide.
For being unruly, I do declare,
I was doomed to transport these seven long years.

“When six of them they were up and past
I was coming home to make up the last.
When the winds did blow and the seas did roar
They cast me here on this foreign shore.”

So then the coastguard he played a part
And with some brandy he cheered the convict's heart:
“Although the night is far advanced
You shall find a friend on the Isle of France.”

So he sent a letter all to the Queen
Concerning the wreck of the Shamrock Green;
And his freedom came by a speedy post
For the absent convict they thought was lost.

“God bless the coastguard,” this convict cried,
“For he's saved my life from the ocean wide.
And I'll drink his health in a flowing glass,
And here's success to the Isle of France.”

Links

See also the Mudcat Café thread Origin: Isle of France.