Controlling Women: Reading Gender in the Ballads Scottish Women Sang

Western Folklore, Fall 2002 by Wollstadt, Lynn

The Scottish ballad tradition has always been a tradition of both sexes; since ballads started to be collected in the eighteenth century, at least, both men and women have learned and passed on these traditional songs.1 According to the recordings made of traditional singers by the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, however, men and women do not necessarily sing the same songs. The ten songs in the School's sound archives most often recorded from female singers between 1951 and 1997, for example, have only two titles in common with the ten songs most often recorded from men.2 Analysis of the specific ballad narratives that were most popular among female singers in twentieth-century Scotland suggests certain buried themes that may underlie that popularity; these particular themes may have appealed more than others to many women singers.

I must preface this study with three vital caveats. First, it would certainly be foolhardy to imply that any singer would never choose to learn a song whose lyrics did not appeal to him or her. Certainly many other factors play into that decision, such as a pleasing melody or the social context with which the song is associated.3 Second, this discussion is based primarily on the number of times that a ballad was recorded and the most common version of each ballad.4 Although this essay does look at specific versions of songs that the School of Scottish Studies has transcribed, many recordings remain untranscribed, and it is possible that certain recordings may contain variations that change the meaning of the song. Finally, it must be noted that the traditional songs that are most often recorded from any particular group of people are not necessarily the most popular among that group or even the favorites of individual singers. Fieldworkers may request certain songs more than others, or singers might sing songs they think the fieldworker wants to hear. Nevertheless, the decision to learn and remember a song does require that a singer find the song appealing or meaningful in some way; the fact that a song has been learned by a particular singer means that that singer found the song worth learning. Thus, it is significant that the songs that appear most often in the repertoires of women-the songs that significant numbers of women found worth learning-show similar patterns in their portrayal of gender roles. These patterns are especially noteworthy because they are at odds with patterns in the larger corpus of traditional ballads in Scotland.

This essay looks specifically at the way the ballads popular among twentieth-century women singers construct both male and female gender roles. What sort of women people these ballads, and what type of men? Though on the surface these ballad narratives seem to describe women who are either pathetic victims or heartless hussies, many can be seen as addressing issues of female power. These narratives not only deal with a woman's lack of control over her own life, but they demonstrate by example ways of circumventing that lack. At the same time, issues of control also appear central to the ideals of masculinity offered by many of these ballads. Interestingly, the men whom the ballads portray as "attractive"-sympathetic supporting characters as well as the male "love interests"-are those who lack power. While Scottish ballads generally take for granted a society in which women function under male control, the most attractive, sympathetic male characters in the ballads popular among women are themselves generally vulnerable, or even victimized. The plights of the female characters in the ballads Scottish women sang show that these songs recognize a cultural system of male hegemony, but the fact that the most positively represented male characters are also vulnerable shows that these ballads do not celebrate that system.

This appreciation of male vulnerability, however, is not typical of the Scottish ballad tradition as a whole. The ballads that most often appear in women's repertoires are much more critical of men who wield power than are most Scottish ballads. Emily Lyle's collection of Scottish ballads, for example, contains forty-seven ballads that include some sort of romantic male figure. Almost three-quarters of these (thirty-five) show attractive, romantically desirable male characters who are in clear positions of power, often simply because of their social position. Of course, close analysis of any of these narratives may reveal subtleties that make such broad generalizations dangerous, but the larger pattern here is significant. Most of the time, male lovers in these ballads are specifically identified as "gentlemen": lords, knights, earls, or perhaps squires, with the occasional elfin knight thrown in the mix. Of the twelve ballads that do not identify their male protagonists as noble, half omit any mention of the man's social class. Only six of these forty-seven ballads depict male protagonists who are clearly not of high social standing: "The Keach i the Creel" (Child 281), 'Johny Faa, the Gypsy Laddie" (Child 200: "The Gypsy Laddie"), and "Bob Norris" (Child 83: "Child Maurice"), "The Shepherd's Son" (Child 112: "The Baffled Knight"), "The Dowie Dens o Yarrow" (Child 214: "The Braes o Yarrow"), and "Bog o' Gight" (Child 209: "Geordie").