“The Bold Poachers”
Description
Three brothers go poaching one night in January. The sound of their guns brings the gamekeepers. One shoots a gamekeeper, then another. The brothers are taken prisoner; two are sentenced to be transported, the third is hanged
Notes
MacColl & Seeger call "The First Day in October" a composite, and so it is, but the similarities to "The Bold Poachers," particularly the use of the name Parkins for the guilty young man, have persuaded me to place it here. - PJS
Cross references
- cf. "Keepers and Poachers" (plot)
- cf. "The Poacher's Fate" [Laws L14] (subject)
Broadsides
- Bodleian, Firth c.19(47), "Oakham Pachers [sic] ("Young men in every station"), E.M.A. Hodges (London), 1855-1861; also 2806 c.15(253), Harding B 20(199), "Oakam Poachers" or "The Lamentation of Young Perkins"; Firth c.19(63), Johnson Ballads 2038, "The Oakham Poachers"
Recordings
- Wiggie Smith, "The Oakham Poachers" (on Voice18)
References
- MacSeegTrav 98, "The First Day in October" (1text, 1 tune); this entry also contains 1 nearly-complete text for "The Bold Poachers" (collected by E. J. Moeran, not by them)
- DT, POACHRS
- Roud #1686
- BI, McCST098