(What Will We Do With) Maud Butler

Words and music:  John Thompson

Mark Cryle was kind enough to tell me about the amazing Maud Butler, a seventeen-year-old girl who was so keen to help the war effort in 1915, that she bought up a uniform one piece at a time and then stowed away on a troop ship.  Twice!

Her amazing story is well worth telling.  There are some especially good links online to original news stories about her exploits:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/129568967?

and for her persistent offending:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/109949097?

Maud Butler had a brother in the army

And so she made her way to Sydney town

At 17 she knew her mind

She wouldn't just be left behind

And so Maud tried to join the army

Chorus:
Oh, what will we do with Maud Butler?

She dresses as a soldier and she wants to go to war

She jumped a ship to cross the foam

Better than any stay-at-home

The prettiest little soldier-boy the Army ever saw.

A lovely farmer's daughter from old Kurri Kurri town

When she tried to sign on as a nurse they turned the poor girl down.

So she bought herself some soldier's gear

Cut her hair and wiped her tears

And she climbed up a rope to board a transport

Three days in a life-raft with not a bite to eat

Til bold as brass she walked the decks, the sailor-boys to meet

An officer saw her walking about

Her boots were wrong, they found her out.

Poor Maud was put ashore in dear old Melbourne

Only two months later, Maud was back on board again

Another attempt to see the front, in the company of men

“I'll do my bit to help the war”

She told them when she was back on shore

"I just want to be a soldier"

This young girl's an example to all of those who shirk

Where other's would have given up, Maud Butler went to work

A lesser girl would have had enough

But Maud was made of sterner stuff

So raise a cheer and sing of Miss Maud Butler

Ronald Ryan

Mark Cryle




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Ronald Ryan was the poor bastard son
of a drunken miner who died of black lung
That was the depression, he was born in 25
mother turning tricks just to keep the kids alive

That's a good start for a life of crime
he was no gangster, strictly small time
but a 13 year stretch, he'd do 5 for sure
a Friday 13th, November 64

CHORUS:
If there's a hard way to live
If there's an easy way to die
If he leadeth me
The quiet waters by
don't ask me for my tears
Or for whom the bells toll
He can't save my neck
Can he save my soul

Ronald was a schemer
Rising for a fall
With Peter Walker he went over that wall
One Pentridge warder lay dead as he fell
Who pulled that trigger
You probably can tell

3 weeks after the boys had flown the coop
Tipped off in Sydney, the cops made their swoop
In the dock he stood there
Sentence was read
Guilty of murder, hanged until dead

the judge and jury never thought he would swing
But the men in power had votes to win
give me law and order
the cry of the day
Ronald Ryan was the bastard who paid

While there's a gathering at the Coburg hotel
Ronald takes communion inside his cell
One nip of whisky before he goes
Candles and protests out on Sydney Road

They fit the shackles, then they fit the cap
They hit the lever, you plummet through the trap
the hangman's table, it's all worked out
Pray that the rope is strong and the beam is stout


Executed at 8 a.m. on 3 February 1967 in Pentridge gaol, Ronald Ryan was the last man to be judicially hanged in Australia. This song by Brisbane's Mark Cryle, was performed by Steve Cook and John Thompson at the Top Half Folk Club in Darwin on 2 June, 2011.

The photograph is of Ryan at the time of his arrest.