With a translation from the original Moreton Bay Courier, 1846.
This is the Victorian equivalent of a gossip blind item. My one-sentence translation is below.
LOVE IN THE BUSH.
We have been informed that the blind god[i] has been making great havoc lately on Darling Downs; and that a sad misadventure has befallen an ancient and respectable shepherd in that district.
A knight of St. Crispin[ii] has made free with one of the gentle shepherdesses, residing not a hundred miles from Jimba[iii], and succeeded in inducing her to lay aside the crook to assume the zone of Venus[iv]. Though exceeding by some years the respectable age of forty, love still throbbed in the bosom of our hero, and he wooed and won the fascinating damsel, whose charms penetrated his double-breasted waistcoat, and captured with sweet agony his yielding affections.
The interesting fair one, be it known, possesses artificial, as well as natural attractions, and is a lady not only well-looking, but heiress to a fine flock of ewes, which she has been in the habit of tending for the last two years with assiduous care, which circumstance could not escape the observation of our Lothario[v], who, it may be accounted, therefore, not only loved well, but, (as the world goes) wisely.
Thrilling with dear anticipation, (having received the consent of the “gentle shepherdess” to the plighting of their troth), the ardent swain, in an importunate moment, induced the yielding fair one to elope from her father’s house (hut) in order to enter into the silken loop of matrimony[vi]..
Horses having been provided, the happy pair were proceeding to our far-famed township[vii], when their absence became known to the lady’s relations; instant pursuit was resolved on, and the following day, the lady and her lover were discovered by the pursuers seated tete-a-tete under a gum-tree, enjoying a comfortable pot of the best bohea[viii], and damper. On the appearance of the enraged parent and his assistants, who, by the bye, were armed to the teeth – consternation seized the amorous swain-love absconded-and he fled ingloriously, leaving the luckless dulcinea[ix] in the hands of the captors.
I think this means that a shoemaker ran away with a station-owner’s daughter, only to be caught by her father on the way to town to find a preacher.
Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane, Qld.: 1846 – 1861), Saturday 5 September 1846, page 2
Images created by AI, based on heaven knows what.
[i] Cupid, rather than Hodr, I imagine.
[ii] A shoemaker. St Crispin, and his brother Crispinian, were shoemakers who preached Christianity to the Gauls. They were beheaded for their trouble, but only after being chucked in a river with weights around their necks and surviving.
[iii] Jimbour Station, outside of Dalby. Under the management of Thomas Bell, Esq. (father of Dr Joshua Bell).
[iv] I imagine that this means that the couple “got busy,” to use the vulgar modern parlance.
[v] In the 1703 play The Fair Penitent, a character named Lothario seduced and betrayed the female lead. The name became shorthand for an amoral seducer of women.
[vi] The couple eloped to marry without parental permission.
[vii] This means Brisbane. Bless.
[viii] Bohea was the commercial name for tea grown in the Wuyi Mountains, China.
[ix] Dulcinea was Don Quixote’s love interest in Cervantes’ novel. It is also a Spanish term meaning variously, mistress or sweetheart.
Moreton Bay and More 