"dropped on" (Non-Standard conjoined subject noun phrases)

[Robin Hamilton]

Looking at the material again, it looks as if the phrase George draws
attention to, "dropped on", may be an artefact of the transmission process
of the song, and first appears quite late.  So not an authentic antedating
of earliest recorded use.   :-(

The version which I quoted from in my original post begins:

Come all you gallant poachers that ramble void of care
That walk out on a moonlight night with your dog, your gun and snare
The harmless hare and pheasant you have at your command
Not thinking of your last career out on Van Diemen's Land.

Me and five more went out one night into Squire Duncan's park
To see if we could catch some game, the night it being dark
But to our great misfortune we got dropped on with speed
And they took us off to Warwick gaol which made our hearts to bleed.

(Web cite:
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/lloyd/songs/vandiemensland.html
 )

Possibly the earliest version, found as a broadsheet in the Bodeleian
collection -- Harding B 11(2815) -- has a first stanza which is clearly that
of the version above, but with a second stanza which differs markedly:

"Van Diemans Land"

Come all my gallant poachers that ramble void of care,
That walk out by moonlight with your dog gun & snare,
The lofty hare and pheasants you have at your command,
Not thinking of your last career upon Vendeman's land.

Poor Tom Brown, from Nottingham, Jack williams, and Poor Joe,
we are three daring poachers the country do well know,
At night we were trepann'd by keepers hid in sand
who for 14 years, transported us unto Vendieman's Land.

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, there's Williams, A: Folk
songs of the upper Thames, 1923, p 263, 264.   (Web cite:
http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getfolk.php?id=934 ):

    "Poor Tom Brown, of Nottingham Town"

Verse 1

Poor Tom Brown, of Nottingham Town, Jack Williams and poor Joe,
They were three daring poachers, the county well does know;
At night they were trepanned by keepers hid in sands,
For fourteen years transported unto Van Dieman's Land.

Verse 2

Me and five more went out one night into Squire Duncan's park,
To see if we could catch some game, the night it being dark;
But, to our great misfortune, we got dropped with speed,
They sent us off to Warwick jail, which made our hearts for to bleed.

This looks as if it were constructed by clamping external material onto the
earlier "Van Deiman's Land", and somewhere along the way, possibly even late
in the 19thC, "dropped" or "dropped on" got written into the text.  (In the
above version "we got dropped" would fit HDAS 4a, with "dropped" =
"discovered".)

So Vaux retains his priority in HDAS DROP 4a.

Teach me to do my homework properly in the first place.

Apologies all round.

Robin

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Thompson" <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 9:56 PM
Subject: "dropped on" (Non-Standard conjoined subject noun phrases)


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      "dropped on" (Non-Standard conjoined subject noun phrases)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In a message dated February 24, 2010, Robin Hamilton quotes a poaching
> ballad called "Hares in the Old Plantation," evidently from the late 18th
> C:
> Me and five more went out one night into Squire Duncan's park
>            To see if we could catch some game, the night it being dark
>            But to our great misfortune we got dropped on with speed
>            And they took us off to Warwick gaol which made our hearts to
> bleed
>
> This seems to be HDAS's 4a, "to become aware of, to discover, const. with
> to or on".  The earliest citation for this sense in HADS is 1812, from
> Vaux' Memoirs.
> HDAS's various senses referring to being arrested, (under #5), all date
> from the very early 20th C.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

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