Controlling Women: Reading Gender in the Ballads Scottish Women Sang

Western Folklore, Fall 2002 by Wollstadt, Lynn

The female protagonist of "Lord Thomas and Fair Annie" (Child 62: "Fair Annie"), a ballad the School of Scottish Studies collected from only four different singers, experiences a similar struggle. Her highborn lover and the father of her seven children brings home a wealthy wife, casting Annie aside. Annie is at the mercy of Lord Thomas's decision, and although she is clearly unhappy she welcomes the new wife. She is saved from abandonment only when the other woman realizes they are sisters. Annie's goal, finally realized when her sister leaves Annie her own gold, is marriage to the heartless lord. The ballad "The Shepherd's Dochter" (Child 110: "The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter") similarly shows a young woman very directly contending with male hegemony, and again the ballad ultimately confirms the romantic desirability of the highborn, powerful hero, while at the same time condemning his actions. The "shepherd's dochter" is clearly a plucky heroine, as she insists on holding accountable the "gay braw gentleman" who has helped himself to her virginity, following him to court and telling the king of her rape. Even after he tries to squirm out of the king's order to marry her by offering her gold and repeatedly insults her, the young woman still insists ori the marriage. The punch line of the talc is in the final stanza, however, when she reveals that she is actually of noble blood herself. Thus the gentleman is tortured for a while with the belief that he must marry a shepherd's daughter, but he is ultimately rewarded with a well-born wife for his rape of a seeming commoner. Though Stewart classifies this ballad as one of cultural success but personal failure because of the rape, the young woman seems to be pleased enough to marry her attacker, telling him they make a fine couple: "But yet I think a fitter match / Could scarcely gang thegither." This ballad was collected from eleven singers by the School of Scottish Studies-nine men and only two women-and most sang a differently titled version.5 Interestingly, the unsuitability of "The Shepherd's Daughter" to late-twentieth-century sensibilities, at least, was illustrated to me in the summer of 1999, when I spoke with a professional folk singer who had recently begun learning "The Shepherd's Daughter" to add to his repertoire, but whose wife so disliked the ballad's ending that she convinced him not to perform it.6

These four ballads are just a brief example of the type of men who seem to be most prevalent in the Scottish ballad world. Although the path to the altar is seldom smooth and women must often use their wits or their beauty to get their man, desirable romantic partners are nearly always commanding and authoritative. Even the few ballads in the larger Scottish ballad corpus whose male protagonists are not particularly powerful or nobly born tend to confirm this message. For example, the title character in "The Shepherd's Son" is too nice for his own good; he is a wimp. The ballad condemns his compassion, mocking the lack of personal power that this version seems to associate with his low social status. Because he does not force himself on the "lady fair" he finds swimming naked but instead helps her to the safety of her father's house, she taunts him: "Tough! You're a fool without,' she says, / 'And I'm a maid within.'" The lady's message is explicit; she explains "had you done what you should do, / I neer had left you there." Rape, a display of male power, would have won him a highborn wife, but courtesy brings only ridicule.