We should be careful about confusing homosexuality with these
occurrences of women joining masculine professions.  In many (personally
I think most) cases the women did this either because they had no
alternative means of support, or because they wished to follow their
loved ones, or because they had what was then a socially unacceptable
spirit of adventure.

I have often idly wondered, being a soldier myself, how these women
managed to conceal their gender, or if they failed how they managed to
live apparently normally among the men.  Was their collusion?  Was there
a price?  Was there simple acceptance of the situation?

There is also the ambiguity factor that makes these stories (true or
false) memorable - at least to men - but maybe we don't want to go round
that buoy again.

Charles.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Olson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 12 October 1999 20:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sexual deviance in ballads


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.

(ZNn is the quick find reference number in the broadside ballad
index on my website) 
"The Famous Woman Drummer", (ZN2076) and "The Gallant She-
Souldier" (ZN3084) are both about a real event, the birth of a
son to the woman drummer, Mrs. John Clarke, on July 16, 1655 in a London
inn. Laurence Price's ballad, ZN2076, is very scant on hard facts,
however.

Searching though the broadside ballad index on 'female' and
'woman' will turn up several other ballads on women in what are 
traditionally men's roles; The Female Doctor, The Female Captain,
The Female Warrior, The Female Souldier, The Woman Warrior.
Among women fighters there's also Mary Ambree, but none on Joan 
of Arc that I know of.
 
I'm sure that a similar search through Steve Roud's folksong and
broadside indexes would turn up more of this type of ballad.

Bruce Olson

My website: www.erols.com/olsonw <A
href="http://www.erols.com/olsonw"> Click </a>


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