Controlling Women: Reading Gender in the Ballads Scottish Women Sang

Western Folklore, Fall 2002 by Wollstadt, Lynn

Even more pertinently, those "gentlemen" lovers who pervade the ballad tradition are "doers": these men act, and women must deal with their actions. As a tool for considering how successfully the women in these ballads fare in that task, I have found useful Polly Stewart's essay, "Wishful Wilful Wily Women: Lessons for Female Success in the Child Ballads" (Stewart 1993). Stewart's essay categorizes orally derived Child ballads that contain female characters that are in agonistic situations with men. She evaluates the success of the cultural and personal goals of the women in these narratives, defining "cultural success" as meeting male expectations and "personal success" as averting harm or reaching a personal goal. Each ballad that Stewart evaluates can thus have one of four possible outcomes: personal and cultural success, personal success but cultural failure, personal failure but cultural success, or personal and cultural failure. Although this system of categorization can be clumsy, and Stewart's assessments are at times debatable, it is a useful place to begin a discussion of what happens to the women in ballads.

The ballad "Burd Ellen" (Child 63: "Child Waters"), for example, is a variation on a common plot in Lyle's collection, and Stewart labels it as one of both personal and cultural success. Lord John leaves the narrative's pregnant heroine. She dresses as a page and follows his horse on foot, telling her about-to-be-born baby, "Your father rides on high horseback, / Cares little for us twae." Even after the lord acknowledges her and takes her home, he insists there is no hope for a marriage and tells her that his dogs and horses will fare better than she: "O my dogs sal eat the good white bread, / An ye sal eat the bran . . . O my horse sal eat the good white meal, / An ye sal eat the corn." Her perseverance is finally rewarded when his mother intervenes on her behalf and he marries her. According to Stewart's classification system, she has achieved cultural success because she becomes safely married and avoids the social disgrace of a bastard child, and she has achieved personal success because this is clearly her own goal as well. While the heroine in this ballad demonstrates tremendous tenacity and manipulates her situation so that she gets what she needs, she is clearly working against her lover, and against the patriarchal system he represents.

We see a similar situation in another ballad not collected by the School of Scottish Studies, "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" (Child 73). Fair Annet is also faced with a romantic partner who chooses to marry a wealthier woman, and again the ballad does not condemn the lord for this decision. Lord Thomas remains a desirable figure; it is the homely "nut-browne bride" who is the ballad's villain and stabs the beautiful Annet when she appears at the wedding. Though this ballad ends tragically, with the murder of Annet and suicide of Lord Thomas, it reaffirms the theme of young women having to cope with the actions of the powerful men they want to marry. Stewart categorizes this ballad as one of both personal and cultural failure, but I would argue that Annet's death does not necessarily mean that Annet has not met cultural expectations. The ballad world seems to approve of her crashing of the wedding, as she is accompanied by twenty-four knights and the same number of ladies, "As gin she had bin a bride." Though she and her lover do not marry, they are finally united by the intertwining of the birch and the briar that grow on their respective graves, proving that they "were twa luvers deare."