Controlling Women: Reading Gender in the Ballads Scottish Women Sang

Western Folklore, Fall 2002 by Wollstadt, Lynn

This ballad's portrayal of masculinity is also emblematic of these ten ballad narratives. "Mill o' Tifty's Annie" clearly portrays Andrew Lammie as romantically desirable: "Proper he was, both young and gay, / His like was not in Fyvie." Even Annie's mother asks her, "Did you ever see a prettier man / Than the trumpeter o Fyvie?" Of the four male characters in the narrative, however, Andrew has the least authority. He answers both to Lord Fyvie, who is his employer and lord, and to Annie's father (and even, to a lesser extent, her brother), who must agree to her marriage. Andrew even shows himself to wield less power in this situation than Annie, who predicts her own death. Upon his return, Andrew adopts the often-feminine role of declaring his death, as he promises, "My love she died for me to-day; / But I'll die for her to-morrow." The characters with power, Annie's father and the brother who beats her to death, are the ballad's bad guys.

Similar themes are found in "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow." Again a young woman is in love with a man socially beneath her, in this case a "plooman lad."10 She is also being courted, however, by "nine noblemen" who come en masse to fight him in competition for her. The ploughman beats them all, but he is fatally stabbed in the back by the woman's brother. The eleven figures of male authority in the story (the nine "gentlemen" suitors, her brother, and her father) all disapprove of the young woman's choice of lover, even though the young man proves himself valiantly. The young woman again dies at the end of the ballad, not realizing her goal of union with her lover. Her death, like Annie's, is brought about by her brother, though indirectly this time. While there are certain key differences between the two stories, the most obvious being that this young woman lacks Annie's antagonism toward the men who oppose her, this woman also deliberately uses death to avoid something she does not want: an alternate marriage. And like Annie, she verbally stands up to her father before she dies, refusing to allow him to take control of the situation with his offer to find her "some prettier man" to marry. "O ye may tak' your seven sons," she tells him, "An' wed them all tomorrow / But a fairer flower ne'er sprang in June / Than the lad I lost in Yarrow." In this way, "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow" can be read as another instance of limited female success. The woman controls the outcome of the story, even if she cannot control the events that lead up to that outcome. That these women can only control their own lives through their deaths makes a dramatic statement, of course, about the patriarchal power structure of the culture that kept these ballads alive for so many generations.

The most attractive male character in "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow" is, again, as in "Mill o Tifty's Annie," the one with the least amount of real power. When the nine armed noblemen come to fight the "plooman lad," the ploughman lad wins ("Three he slew, and three withdrew / And three lay deadly wounded"), only to be stabbed in the back by the girl's brother. The wielders of social authority, the noblemen, are not desirable partners; the ballad makes clear the unacceptability of their aggression, as the ploughman twice protests, "it's nae an equal marrow." His physical prowess does seem to be an admirable trait, but it is clearly riot enough. He is first at the mercy of the noblemen's insistence on an unfair fight, and then vulnerable to the cruel brother's cowardly attack. The ballad then increases the pathos of the situation by focusing on the ploughman's dead body, as his lover combs the hair of the "bloody corpse" and "washed the reed blude frae his wounds." While the ploughman's heroic fighting is summed up in two lines, his helpless dead body is the focus of three stanzas, underscoring the tragic subjugation of both the woman and her lover at the hands of more socially powerful men.