Dear All,

I have sat quietly on this one, as the first six weeks of the academic
year have all been panic. Having a few moments, allow me a couple of
spontaneous thoughts.

While I think we all agree that folk songs are entitled authorship where
due, perhaps the feature that used to be considered spontaneous folksong
combustion may be reassigned the property of social concensus of
message. Given this, it seems logical that in times where even admitting
enjoyment of conventional sex was not exactly on, any songs about sexual
deviation not accepted by society would be unlikely to be created, or,
if created, to survive socity's critical eye.

Society did understand standard infidelity and there are plenty of songs
that express it. Likewise it could condone wife-beating - William the
Conqueror actually became more attractive in his wife-to-be's eyes after
he'd walloped her within an inch of her life. It could take ravishing,
temptresses along Ratcliffe Highway who were, and are, a special
category. 

In the same way abortion and murder are understood, if not accepted.
They are harshly judged but embraced as part of what makes society tick,
or the hiccups of the ticking.

But the natural moment in history for lesbian ballads to be created
would be now, in the second half of the 20th century, when homosexuality
is accepted by a sufficiently large percentage of society, yet by many
remains uncondoned, and by others frightening and requiring explanation.

It is explanation which is one of the main social trasks of folk art,
whether visual or oral. In an era where it did not have a chance of
being accepted even as a deviation, because standard copulation itself
was almost taken as deviation, there is no logical reason for lesbian
ballads to have blossomed or even existed. Certainly cross-dressing is
not a synonym for lesbianism; as Shane points out, it is exactly the
opposite. Neither should single-sex embraces be taken as signs of
homosexuality of either kind - Erasmus' letter home to Holland while he
was staying with his friend Thomas More is proof enough that touching
was as natural in England in the 16th century as it is today in many
parts of Europe.

That's my oarsworth for tonight!

Cheers,

Andy

Shane Dunphy wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> There has been much discourse about lesbianism in ballads, and I think that we must admit: it's few and far between. The closest thing that I am aware of is in The Curragh of Kildare, where the young woman dresses as a soldier to see her husband, although this kind of cross-dressing hardly falls under the category of lesbianism (surely the woman in this case is driven by purely hetero-sexual motives!) However, if one widens the net a bit, one can find one or two examples of sexual deviancy in ballads. The Well Below the Valley is about incest, while Yarmouth Town features group sex. The Zoological Gardens also contains a verse where the prostitute threatens to have sex with the "Hairy Baboon" if her consort does not act more enthusiastically and complete the task at hand.
> That's all for now,
> Shane.


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