The Wild Colonial Boy

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"The Wild Colonial Boy" (Roud 677, Laws L20) is a traditional anonymously penned Irish-Australian folk ballad that tells the story of a bushranger in early colonial Australia who dies during a gunfight with local police. Versions of the ballad give different names for the bushranger involved: some based on real individuals and some apparently fictional. A common theme is romanticisation of the bushranger's battle against colonial authority. According to a report in The Argus in November 1880, Ann Jones, the innkeeper of the Glenrowan Hotel, asked her son to sing the ballad when the Kelly gang were at her hotel in June that year.^[1]