Elizabeth Bay House Concert: The Exile of Erin on the Plains of Emu

Words by ‘M, of Anambaba’ (John McGarvie): ‘The Exile of Erin on the Plains of Emu’ (Tune: The Exile of Erin) (Sydney, 1829).

Koen van Stade (tenor)
Neal Peres Da Costa (pianoforte)

This lovely song, published in the Sydney Gazette in 1829, is a parody of the Irish nationalist song, Erin go Bragh (‘The Exile of Erin’), to be sung to its tune. It ventriloquises the laments of a colonial exile – perhaps a convict or political prisoner, perhaps not – but who, in either case, finds himself ‘enchained’ to the hard land on the Emu Plains, cruelly separated from his motherland, mother, and betrothed. The empathetic author was neither convict nor Irish himself, but the Glasgow-born Presbyterian cleric John McGarvie.

‘On the Plains of Emu: Settler Art Music in Early NSW’, Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, 27 February 2022. A concert presented by the Sydney Living Museums Foundation and Hearing the Music of Early New South Wales 1788-1860, Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. Australian Research Discovery Project DP210101511 – 2021–24.

Видео Elizabeth Bay House Concert: The Exile of Erin on the Plains of Emu канала Museums of History NSW