Transportation ballads are a genre of broadside ballad some of which became an important part of the folk song traditions of Britain and Ireland. They concern the transportation of convicted criminals firstly to the American colonies and then to penal colonies in Australia. Transportation ballads were published as broadsides, (song sheets sold cheaply in the streets, at markets and at fairs). Many have passed into the folk tradition and have been collected subsequently from traditional singers. Ewan McColl wrote: "The element of protest, almost entirely absent in the confession songs, is a distinct feature of the 'Transportation Ballads'. Though these songs are generally cast in the same mould as confession songs, they display fewer traits of Grubb Street construction and, on the whole, the poetry, though often crude, is not without vigour. As a body they represent the most recent and perhaps the last great impulse towards song-making on the part of the English peasantry." (Sleeve notes to "Chorus from the Gallows" with Peggy Seeger, 1963). Motifs and themes Cautionary Tales Many transportation ballads contain, at some point, a warning to young men or women to avoid crime and bad company: "Come all you young fellows take warning by me And never go midnight walking and shun bad company. And never go midnight walking or else you will rue the day While you will get transported and sent to Botany Bay." (From Botany Bay from the singing of Suffolk singer Jumbo Brightwell). Come all you wild and wicked youths, wheresomever you may be I pray now pay attention and listen unto me, The fate of our poor transports, as you shall understand, The hardships they do undergo upon Van Diemen's Land. (From Van Diemen's Land from the singing of Norfolk singer Harry Cox). A Decent Upbringing and Good Prospects Often the ballads the narrator stresses his good upbringing, perhaps to emphasise his fall from grace: My father and my mother dear they nourished me in my tender years, They little thought I should be trapann'd and banished from my native land. (From the broadside "The returned convict; or the horrors of transportation" (Roud V9114) I was bound an apprentice in the County of Lanarkshire, Unto a linen draper, O the truth that I will tell, I bore a good character, and my master lov'd me well, Till once in a jade's company, I happened for to fall. (From the broadside