Controlling Women: Reading Gender in the Ballads Scottish Women Sang

Western Folklore, Fall 2002 by Wollstadt, Lynn

On the other hand, the male protagonist in 'Johny Faa, the Gypsy Laddie," is not well born, but he is certainly powerful. Though the many versions of this ballad lend themselves to several interpretations, and many end with the gypsies' hanging, the outlaw for whom the "fair lady" leaves her lord is always a commanding figure. Popular tradition connects him with the king of the gypsies, or "Lord and Earl of Little Egypt," as a 1540 document identifies a Rom named Johnne Faw.7 He is clearly charismatic as well, though his personal power over the lady is often explained as magic, the casting of a glamor. Though he is outside proper noble society, therefore, the "gypsy laddie" is by no means a humble character. Neither does the ballad "Bob Norris" actually give us a low-born hero; this narrative is actually a tragic tale of mistaken identity. Lord Barnard beheads the humble Bob Norris in a jealous rage, only to discover that Bob Norris is actually the illegitimate son of Lady Barnard. Thus Bob Norris, the most attractive and sympathetic male character in this ballad, does lack social authority, but he is still of noble blood. "The Reach i the Creel," on the other hand, is a comic ballad. As a "bonnie clerk," its protagonist is neither personally nor socially commanding, but neither does the ballad portray him as a particularly appealing lover. The ballad's focus is not actually on a romantic union between lovers, but on the mishaps that ensue when the clerk tries to sneak into a young maid's family home. After a closer look, therefore, it seems that of the forty-seven ballads in Lyle's collection that involve a male romantic figure, only two, "Bog o' Gight" and "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow," offer men who are not socially commanding as desirable romantic partners.

These narratives of male authority do not seem to be the ones that Scottish women kept alive for generations, however. Of the ten ballads that the School of Scottish Studies recorded most often from traditional women singers, none shows women striving to marry the commanding, nobly born men who are desired so often in the tradition as a whole. At the heart of these narratives are indeed issues of authority, but the gender roles they portray do not seem to follow quite the same pattern as the majority of those in the larger Scottish corpus. Most of the female characters in these ballads do deal with a lack of control over their own lives, as is typical in Scottish ballads, but though the heroines in these ten are often less successful both personally and culturally, they actually model ways of gaining control in apparently hopeless situations.8 A larger difference, though, is that the attractive or sympathetic male characters in these ballads-when there are any-are also in vulnerable situations, either having lost their usual authority or never having had it. Desirable romantic partners are not the men who wield the most power; on the contrary, well-born and authoritative men are depicted most positively when they are on their deathbeds.