The Black Velvet Band: A Song History
"The Black Velvet Band" is a transportation ballad: a young man falls for a woman whose hair is bound with a velvet band, and when she steals a gentleman's watch she lets the blame fall on him, so that he is the one convicted and transported.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index dates it to before 1854 on the strength of a broadside in the Bodleian Library's Harding collection.[1] Steve Roud, quoted on Mainly Norfolk, takes the small number of known broadside printings as evidence that the song dates from around 1840, and observes that its earlier texts always locate the story in Barking, Essex.[2]
James E. Buttersworth, Clipper Ship "Great Republic", hand-colored lithograph, 1853. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for the sea voyages in the song; it has no connection to it.
Singers have moved the opening scene from town to town: the Norfolk singer Harry Cox, recorded by Ewan MacColl in 1955, began his version in Belfast, as most traditional versions do, and Roud notes that this detail has led some to presume an Irish origin.[2] The Bushwhackers set it in London on their 1957 EP Australian Bush Songs, while a version published in 1970 as The Black Ribbon Band places it in Tralee.[2] Both the Cox and the Bushwhackers versions send the hero to Van Diemen's Land, as Tasmania was called in its convict era.[2] The Ballad Index finds the song in England, Ireland, North America and Australia.[1] Rod Stradling, in notes reproduced on Mainly Norfolk, writes that it "seems particularly common in Australia and New Zealand."[2] The Australian literary database AustLit records it among early broadsides relating to Australia, reproduced in facsimile in Ronald Edwards's The Convict Maid (1985).[3]
Luke Kelly learned the Harry Cox version at one of MacColl's singing workshops in London and recorded it with The Dubliners as a single in 1967.[2] Issued on the Major Minor label, it entered the UK chart in September 1967 and peaked at number 15.[4] Mainly Norfolk counts it among the group's best-known songs.[2]
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