[In the following excerpts, Dugaw examines the popular appeal of Mary Ambree, an early seventeenth-century ballad about a transvestite warrior woman, a story that appeared in various manifestations in chapbooks for over two hundred years.]

The Anglo-American Female Warrior is a high-mettled heroine of popular ballads who masquerades as a man and ventures off to war for love and for glory. Songs celebrating such women flourished as lower-class “hits” for over 200 years, reaching the zenith of their popularity in the eighteenth century. Indeed, the Female Warrior and masquerading heroines like her were an imaginative preoccupation of the early modern era, appearing not only in popular street ballads but in a host of other genres as well: epic, romance, biography, comedy, tragedy, opera, and ballad opera. But the popular ballad gives us this transvestite heroine in one of her most explicit forms, and in the only form which has carried her right up to our own time. Once a “hit-song” commonplace, the Anglo-American Female Warrior survives today—albeit marginally—in the folksong traditions of Britain and North America. This book will examine the Female Warrior of Anglo-American ballad tradition with particular attention to what she reveals to us about women, gender, and the makeup of heroism in that early modern era in which she flourished.¹

Female Warrior ballads are success stories. Highly conventionalized, they sing of valiant “Nancys” and “Pollys” who defy oppressive parents, don men's clothing, sail the seas, and fight cruel wars. Inevitably their masquerading heroine—a model of bravery, beauty, and pluck—proves herself deserving in romance, able in war, and rewarded in both. The earliest such ballad in Anglo-American tradition is Mary Ambree, a London “hit-song” of about 1600 which remained popular to the 1800s.² …

Mary Ambree was a spectacular success. Indeed, the ballad remained in print more than two centuries beyond 1609. … In the context of my discussion here, the commercial career of the ballad Mary Ambree is instructive because it illustrates just how the motivic status and the tremendous popularity of the Female Warrior of balladry developed. To remain popular over a long period of time, a street-song must go through stages, its popularity in each stage won by its being marketed, purchased, sung, shared, and valued for reasons singular to that stage. These stages in a song's popularity can be identified as: (1) emergence as a “new hit” with topical resonance and immediacy; (2) continuing revival as a “golden oldie,” a well-known standard whose familiarity keeps on selling; and (3) studied preservation as an “antique,” that is, as a curious, moribund, and consequently valuable cultural heirloom.³ Over the two-century career of the celebrated Mary Ambree, fans and publishers pushed this “brave bonny Lasse” and her ballad through all three of these phases of commercial popularity. This chapter and the next will follow the career of The Valorous Acts of Mary Ambree, reconstructing as they do the history of the Female Warrior motif in Anglo-American balladry …

As we have seen, Mary Ambree enjoyed “new hit” status early in the seventeenth century. Luxurio's remarks attest that anyone on a road to London in 1600 would immediately recognize the lines “When Captain couragious whom deeth could not daunt.” Mary Ambree was the equivalent in her time of Ain't She Sweet in the 1920s, Blowin' in the Wind in the 1960s. Moreover, as theatrical references make clear, she was controversial. She represented issues that were obviously the focus of heated attention. At this first stage when a new song catches like a brushfire, it is often topical in just this way—controversial in content and perhaps novel in style and form. People notice it because it is new and different, and because it partakes of some pressing event or issue that is commanding their attention. Such was the case with this first Female Warrior.

Mary Ambree was not the only viraginous woman on the minds of Jacobean men and women. In the first decades of the seventeenth century the English at all levels formulated social and ethical controversies in terms of the mannish woman and the womanish man—hic mulier and haec vir, to quote Middleton's World Tost at Tennis (I, i, 32). This attention to dress, gender, and behavior gave Mary Ambree an immediacy, a topical resonance, that could only have boosted sales. The ballad both contributed to and partook of this charged preoccupation with dress, gender, and viraginous women. Its success, if noteworthy, is not altogether astonishing. Jacobean England was suddenly preoccupied with just such heroines as Mary Ambree.⁴

After this initial notoriety, Mary Ambree continued to flourish into the second stage of commercial popularity, becoming in the commercial ballad repertoire a revival piece, in our parlance, a “golden oldie.” The ballad's belated appearance in the Stationers' Company Register probably signals this second stage of commercial life.⁵ By the time the ballad “partenours” registered Mary Ambree in 1629, the song had been on the streets for a good generation. It had clearly outlasted a single season. The ballad had moved from being a momentary triumph to being a revival piece—a secure, reliable, and ongoing “best-seller.”

Only exceptional ballads reached this second stage of commercial popularity. Indeed, most popular songs are, even today, short-lived phenomena. The fact that both early female transvestite ballads, Mary Ambree and The Merchant's Daughter of Bristol continued to flourish as standard revival pieces attests to their continuing relevance and import. They were more than idiosyncratic, one-time-only moments in popular song history.⁶ By contrast, most broadside songs—the majority of the Female Warrior ballads among them—were fugitive and ephemeral pieces, surfacing for a short time as “new hits” before being displaced on the street-corners by still newer ones.⁷

A ballad like Mary Ambree that endures past its season transcends the journalistic particulars that sparked its initial appearance—the immediate situation, issue, event, or moment of fancy which spawned it and to which it refers. As contemporary references make clear, Mary Ambree quickly came to signify a type of heroine. As we shall see, the Female Warrior ballad eventually became a type of song. This process of generalization has two parts. First, a piece—Mary Ambree, for example—continues to be revived among singers until its value lies more in its familiarity than in its novelty. It acquires for its audience a history of meaning and sentiment—a vertical or diachronic dimension, one might say. Then, there appear new pieces modeled on this ever more familiar old one. This part of the process adds meaning by the cross-referencing of songs one to another—a lateral or synchronic dimension. Thus, the old song in relation to its “progeny” becomes a type, a prefiguring idea. Certainly, the two processes of maintaining old models and imagining new permutations of them intersect. Indeed, new ballads cut from the cloth of old ones actually contribute by their imitation to the revival process. Thus, they reinforce the popularity of their well-known prototypes by assuring people that the “golden oldie” in addition to being a familiar old friend, still has relevance.

The ballad virago Mary Ambree was not alone for long. By the middle of the century when The Valorous Acts … of Mary Ambree still flourished, a handful of new songs about women donning soldier disguise appeared in print. A ballad of the 1640s, The Valiant Commander, with his Resolute Lady, sings—“To A New Northern Tune”—of a feisty loyalist woman who fought in the Civil War.⁸ When her commander husband urges her to flee from besieged Chester to loyalist Shrewsbury, this cavalier heroine, amidst protestations of her love, replies stoutly:

Put me on Mans attire,
          give me a Souldiers Coat,
I'le make King Charles his foes,
          quickly to change their note.
Cock your match, prime your pan
          let piercing bullets flye,
I do not care a pin
          whether I live or dye.

The ballad then goes on to show her true to her word—quite in keeping with the “dangerous example” of Mary Ambree,

She took a Musquet then,
          and a sword by her side
In disguise like a man
          her valour so she try'd
And with her true-love she,
          march'd forth couragiously,
And made away with speed,
          quite through the Enemy.

Particularizing its story with journalistic dispassion, this ballad probably refers to actual events and persons.⁹Mary Ambree seems indeed to have posed an “example.”

Soon after, in the 1650s, two Female Warrior ballads appear which likewise manifest a journalistic style. Moreover, they betray the beginnings of motivic coherence both in their textual borrowing and in their conscious heightening of the innuendo left more implicit in Mary Ambree. The Female Warrior was emerging as a single coherent idea. The Famous Woman Drummer and The Gallant She-Souldier—both commendatory but facetious—tell of a valiant, tough, and sturdy woman who accompanied her soldier to war, aggressively carrying out her masquerade as a man until “she was grown so big with child, which made her fellows wonder.”¹⁰ So alike are these two ballads, not only in their general narrative and thematic tenor but also in their details, that the author of one ballad probably took the text of the other as a model.¹¹ Behind both texts—as with The Valiant Commander—there seem to be actual persons and events. The Gallant She-Souldier ends with the following invitation:

All that are desirous to see the young souldier and his Mother, let them repair to the sign of the Black-Smith's Armes, in East Smithfield, neere unto Towerhill, in London, and inquire for Mr. Clarke, for that was the woman's name.

In these two ballads, The Famous Woman Drummer and The Gallant She-Souldier, we can observe the topical, journalistic impulse at work in broadside ballads, especially in those of the Cromwellian period. At the same time, however, we see joined to this journalistic topicality the emerging features of the Female Warrior as a type, as a conventional motif. These ballads accentuate the facticity of their stories—their immediacy and actuality, indeed, their particularity.¹² Nonetheless, even amidst the factual and purportedly idiosyncratic details of the Royalist “Wife” of The Valiant Commander or the “She-Souldier” mother of The Famous Woman Drummer, the outlines of the Female Warrior as a type of heroine and story begin to surface, especially when these ballads are seen next to each other. Thus, in all of them we recognize the conjunction of Love and Glory which shapes the woman's heroism and our appreciation of it. Then, we note in all a commendatory—if sometimes jocular—tone. And finally, we detect the regularizing of events and language in the stories, and even the interdependence of texts.

Ballad Female Warriors multiplied noticeably after the 1660 Restoration of Charles II to the throne and the loosening of restrictions on ballad publishing. At about this time, the publisher Thomas Vere, one of a later group of “ballad partenours,” popularized Constance and Anthony, which tells of a woman disguised as a sailorboy whose story is conspicuously more sentimental and romantic than the journalistic ballads just discussed. The ballad's opening lines highlight its focus on love:

Of two constant Lovers as I understand,
Were born near Appleby in Westmoreland,
The Lads name Anthony, Constance the Lass,
To sea they went both and great dangers did pass.(13)

Then, a few stanzas later, the ballad summarizes its message:

O see what Love can do,
at home she will not bide:
With her true Love she'll go,
let weal or woe betide.

Thus, the ballad unfolds as a saga of true love under trial. “Drest in Mans array,” Constance goes aboard ship with her sailor. In her disguise she serves as the ship's cook until a tempest hurls these “constant Lovers” literally into a sea of troubles: a shipwreck casts them into the ocean and separates them; rescued by a Spanish merchant, Constance becomes his serving-boy for two years; captured by English pirates, Anthony becomes a galley slave. Finally, the two lovers are united and freed in “Bilbo” at the conclusion of their romantic adventure.

These early Female Warrior ballads—Mary Ambree, The Merchants Daughter of Bristol, The Valiant Commander, with His Resolute Lady, The Gallant She-Souldier, The Famous Woman Drummer, and Constance and Anthony—appear at first glance to be more different than alike. Yet, closer scrutiny shows that, their disparities notwithstanding, these ballads do indeed evidence some of the interconnectedness that characterizes a coherent song tradition or type. First, all have thematic and narrative ingredients in common: the heroic conjunction of Love and Glory; the overturning of a threatened separation by the woman's masquerade; various tests of the heroine's love and soldiering; across the board commendation of her success in love and war. Then, there is textual correspondence, probably imitation, between The Gallant She-Souldier and Price's The Famous Woman Drummer. (As we shall see, a conscious reworking of old texts became quite common among makers of later Female Warrior ballads.) Finally, in addition to serving as textual models, earlier ballads began to supply the tunes for later ones—the tune to The Valiant Commander, with His Resolute Lady, for example, being used for Constance and Anthony. Thus one instance of the emerging type called to mind another. As more new Female Warrior ballads appeared in print, these connections from one ballad to another increased.

Meanwhile, the earliest of ballad Female Warriors, Mary Ambree, continued to turn a profit in the streetsong market. On 1 March 1674/5 inheritors of the ballad stock of Francis Coles—who had entered the ballad in 1629—re-registered it along with 196 other broadside and chapbook titles.¹⁴ Then, in about 1680, these stationers went into a partnership with W. Thackeray of Duck-Lane who continued to print and reprint Mary Ambree through the period, listing it on a broadside catalogue of “small Books, Ballads and Histories” which he published around 1689.¹⁵

While Mary Ambree continued in print as a revival piece, the broadside presses of the 1690s turned out Female Warriors regularly.¹⁶ Increasingly, these new ballads took the shape of a coherent and recognizable motif as heroines and stories more and more resembled each other. Song-makers formulated their new pieces, having in mind an imaginative model of the Female Warrior as a type. Moreover, texts of old ballads were reconstituted into new ones. And so, in the century's last decades more than twenty Female Warrior ballads appeared in print. In addition to the revival pieces, Mary Ambree, The Merchants Daughter of Bristol and Constance and Anthony, there were published The Mariners Misfortune,¹⁷The Seamans Doleful Farwell,¹⁸The Valiant Virgin,¹⁹The Woman Warrier,²⁰The Female Souldier,²¹ and The Maiden Warrier,²² to name a handful of titles.

By the eighteenth century the increasingly popular subject of the Female Warrior took on the quiddity of a shaping formula. It became a regularized and coherent motif. The fascination that began with the notorious “Mary Ambree” and her “dangerous examples” was through the Georgian era a manifest preoccupation. Between 1700 and the middle of the nineteenth century some 100 new Female Warrior ballads came into print—most of them conspicuously predictable examples of an idea that had become commonplace and prototypical.

As new Female Warrior ballads multiplied, interest in Mary Ambree took a new turn, for the old ballad became the subject of antiquarian study. So began the third stage of its career in print: preservation as an “antique.” In 1765, Thomas Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry which contained in its second volume a version of Mary Ambree.²³ Percy's three-volume work was a collection of archaic songs and romances—many of them distinctly “lowbrow”—which he claimed to have acquired from an old manuscript—“the greater part of them … extracted from an ancient folio manuscript in the editor's possession,” as he says.²⁴ In truth, a significant number of the “reliques” probably came from outdated broadsides and chapbooks which Percy had purchased from the mid-century mogul of printed street literature, Cluer Dicey.²⁵ In his remarks, Percy emphasized the antiquity of his ballads and romances, seeing in them “the infancy of genius,” a progenitive stage in Britain's literature and history. A presumption of cultural progress is of course implicit in his nostalgia. Thus, he declares in his “Dedication”:

No active or comprehensive mind can forbear some attention to the reliques of antiquity. It is prompted by natural curiosity to survey the progress of life and manners, and to inquire by what gradations barbarity was civilized, grossness refined, and ignorance instructed.²⁶

Nonetheless, at base there is a powerful admiration and an imaginative romanticizing as he presents to his polite readers

the select remains of our ancient English bards and minstrels, an order of men, who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to soften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music.²⁷

Percy's Reliques became unquestionably one of the most influential and important books of the late eighteenth century. A harbinger of Romanticism, it marks the point at which an interest in antiquities and in the common people swept literary circles—an interest which has yet to subside.²⁸ Creating a sensation in the 1760s, Percy's Reliques soon went into a second, and then a third edition.²⁹ Clearly, upper-class readers of all kinds purchased Percy's studious three-volume collection and made fashionable the humble verses which he presented as ancient minstrelsy of the Middle Ages. Among such verses was The Valorous Acts of Mary Ambree. Looking for antiquities to celebrate and committed to the belief that he had found some, Percy began the “museum life” of Mary Ambree.

At the same time, even as the old ballad was making its appearance in The Reliques, whose audience was decidedly above that of the broadsides, eighteenth-century balladsingers continued to want copies of their old favorite, Mary Ambree. We find editions of the ballad published early in the century—about 1720—and at its halfway point.³⁰ Interestingly enough, however, by the middle of the century Mary Ambree seems to have acquired the status of an archaic piece even among the streetsong publishers—perhaps by way of their familiarity with upper-class antiquarians such as Percy.³¹ Thus, the dominant broadside and chapbook publishers of Georgian England, William and Cluer Dicey, separated their stock in a catalogue of 1754 into new pieces and old, listing Mary Ambree and other similarly archaic revival pieces as “Old Ballads” as opposed to “New Sorts coming out daily.”³²

The Vocal Magazine, a monthly “miscellaneous Assemblage of Songs” from the 1770s, shows how Percy's appreciation of ballad antiques translated into the fashionable parlance of song buyers at the polite level. Published in 1778, this “Assemblage” includes—alongside opera pieces, pastoral lyrics, and playhouse songs—a sampling of antique songs, among which we find Mary Ambree; An Old Ballad. In describing the contents of this Vocal Magazine, the compiler proudly claims to have gathered together “all the English, Scotch, and Irish Songs, Catches, Glees, Cantatas, Airs, Ballads, &c. deemed any way worthy of being transmitted to Posterity.”³³ As an antique, Mary Ambree was considered so “worthy.” The introductory remarks characterize how the compiler—and presumably his audience—regarded such archaic pieces in the collection. They represent, he says,

another Fund of which I shall avail myself, it's Produce being but little known to the generality of the Public; I mean, the Labours of those old Historians, who, like the famous Grecian Bard, though perhaps not quite so successfully, chaunted any memorable Transaction in the rude Poesy of their Times. For … I am fully persuaded some of them contain sufficient Beauties to render them well worthy a Place among the Productions of more enlightened Days.

(A2^v)

The echoing of Percy in these remarks is unmistakable. Thus, a suddenly fashionable antique of “unenlightened Days,” the long-sung Mary Ambree inhabited pages in a polite songbook such as The Vocal Magazine. There among playhouse and drawing-room songs of a manifestly more genteel provenance, the “Old Ballad” does indeed seem a curiosity.

By the late 1700s, the Female Warrior motif probably had its widest currency in English culture. Not only were Female Warrior ballads current on the streets as “new hits,” “golden oldies,” and even “antiques,” but soldier heroines also appeared in more refined songs of this era that were routinely performed in the theatres and pleasure gardens—Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall and Ranelagh.³⁴ Aristocrats and prosperous citizens would not hear from these garden stages the lowly street songs which the broadside publishers of the day busily produced for the lower-classes. Nor would anyone in that context have imagined performing so curious and antique a museum piece as Mary Ambree. Rather, writers of polite songs such as the popular Dibdins or James Wrighten wrote of sprightly female soldiers and sailors as stirring examples of love and patriotism.³⁵

The Female Warrior thus flourished briefly as a polite fashion of the second half of the eighteenth century when, amidst wars and revolutions in America and France, a patriotic militancy swept the country. Sometime about 1790 Mrs. Wrighten was performing The Female Captain, a song written by her husband James Wrighten, prompter to the Theatres Royal of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. Dressed in uniform, she announced to her male listeners: “'Tis your king and your country now calls [sic] for your aid,” and warns that, should they refuse, she will “the breeches assume.”³⁶ Already in the middle of the century Peg Woffington had similarly delivered The Female Volunteer: or, an Attempt to make our Men Stand, an epilogue “intended to be Spoken by Mrs. Woffington in the Habit of a Volunteer, upon reading the Gazette containing an Account of the late Action at Falkirk.” A later stage song by the younger Charles Dibdin called The Female Volunteer presented its female singer as “a merry little wag in a scarlet frock” who coyly queried her audience: “When our gallant lads are obliged to roam / Why should women idly stay at home?”³⁷ With little or no narrative, these stage pieces evidence the widespread fashion for women in soldier regalia and for the image of the Female Warrior. Indeed, so generally popular was the figure of the masquerading Female Warrior in the eighteenth century that the Sadler's Wells Theatre included among its performers one of the many real-life Female Warriors of the day, Hannah Snell. This woman, who fought in the English army and navy under the name of “James Gray,” regularly carried out military exercises in uniform as a part of the entertainments.³⁸ Such upper-class manifestations of the Female Warrior idea show just how widely familiar the heroine was by 1800, and how complex the texture of her popularity in English song traditions had become.

Meanwhile, all through the eighteenth century the lower classes continued their longstanding enthusiasm for the Female Warrior. Broadside publishers in London, the provinces—eventually even in Boston, Providence, and Philadelphia—rolled from their presses new disguise ballads that their songmakers modeled on prototypical “oldies”: The Bristol Bridegroom,³⁹The Female Sea-Captain,⁴⁰The Frolicsome Maid Who Went To Gibralter,⁴¹Jack Monroe,⁴²The Sailor's Happy Marriage,⁴³The Female Drummer,⁴⁴The Female Tar,⁴⁵The Female Champion,⁴⁶ and a host of others. These new songs supplied the broadside- and chapbook-buying public with up-to-date permutations of the long-popular Female Warrior motif that had by then been appearing regularly in street balladry for over a century. Thus, by 1800 we see the Female Warrior idea flourishing in Anglo-American song culture in three ways: (1) The broadside printers continued to turn out Female Warrior ballads, both old and new. (2) A handful of polished and rather idiosyncratic stage songs with theatrical routines brought the Female Warrior as a novelty to a polite audience of playgoers. And (3) Mary Ambree—the most “golden oldie” of all the Female Warriors—had taken on a new guise: she had become a museum piece.

These many permutations of the Female Warrior show the textual complexity that a century and a half of commercial popularity had brought about. If there is no question that the Female Warrior was immensely—and primarily—popular among ballad-singing shoemakers and milkmaids, at the same time she was not unknown to their masters, employers, and Members of Parliament. Moreover, the lower-class ballads show themselves to be representatives of a single motif, a single imaginative idea as they take the shape, almost formulaically, of an over-arching thematic and narrative pattern.

The coherence of the Female Warrior ballads as a tradition is evident even at the surface as the trends evident by the middle of the seventeenth century continued. The tunes, for instance, often bespeak the interdependence and “cross-referencing” of ballads one to another. Later ballads set to the tunes of earlier ones include: Constance and Anthony to the tune used for The Valiant Commander,⁴⁷The Female Cabin Boy to The Female Drummer,⁴⁸Young Henry of the Raging Main to William of the Royal Waggon Train,⁴⁹William and Phillis to William and Harriet.⁵⁰ Moreover, some ballads resemble each other so much that one text must have served as the model for the other: The Gallant She-Souldier for The Famous Woman Drummer,⁵¹The Valiant Virgin for The Bristol Bridegroom,⁵² and William of the Royal Waggon Train for William of the Man-of-War.⁵³

Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century balladmakers also came up with new Female Warrior ballads by simply revising the texts of old ones—usually shortening them, sometimes changing their tone or style. For example, a bawdy ballad might be cleaned up for Britons grown more sentimental and priggish than their Restoration forebears. The Constant Lovers of Worcestershire, an “excellent New Song” of the eighteenth century, is in fact an abbreviated and sentimentalized revision of the cheeky Restoration ballad, The Valiant Virgin.⁵⁴ In addition to shortening the original, the revision plays down the impish descriptions and ribald innuendo of the Restoration text, omitting altogether the episode in which the disguised surgeon's-mate “drest and kist” the wof'ul wounded part” after her sweetheart has been shot in the thigh (“oh! that shot came something nigh”).⁵⁵ Setting the two texts side-by-side, we can see the transforming hand of the revisor:

                                        The Valiant Virgin
To every faithful Lover
that's constant to her dear,
This Ditty doth discover
Affections pure and claere;
Affections and afflictions too
do in this Story move,
Where Youth, and truth,
obtain the Crown of Love.
A Man of mean extraction,
brought up in Worc'ster-shiere,
Was guided by Affection
to love a Lady dear,
Whose eyes did shew like morning dew,
that doth on Lillies lye;
Her face, and grace,
well mixt with Majesty.
She was the only Heiress
unto a Gentleman,
And all her Fathers care is
to marry her to one,
Whose welth & wit, may fairly fit
a Lady of such worth;
But he, that she did Love,
was poore by birth.
A farmers son being handsome,
did catch this Ladies heart
So fast in hold, no ransome,
can free it from the Dart:
The gentleman, when he began
to understand this thing,
Quoth hee, I'le free,
my fond daughter in the spring.
The Spring came, & the Pressing
was every where begun;
Her Fathers fears increasing,
did Press the Farmers Son,
No money could Redeem him,
thought she, if he must go,
I'le ne're, stay here,
But I'le be a Seaman too.
                                        The Second Part,
The Gentleman did Press him,
and sent him to the slaughter,
He thought fit to Press the Man
& would have prest his daughter;
His Wit prevents all her intents,
for on her knees he brought her;
But one, Love gone,
straight the tother follows after.
This Maid with ingenuity
had every Surgeons part,
A Ladies hand, an Eagles eye,
but yet a Lyons heart;
She knew all tents, & instruments
Salves, Oyntments, Oyls & all,
They they imploy
in the fight when Souldiers fall.
In mans Aparil she did
resolve to try her Fate,
and in the Ship where he rid,
she went as Surgons Mate;
Sayes she, my souldier shall not be
destroy'd for want of Cure,
I'le Dress, and Bless,
whatsoever I endure.
Their names Philip and Mary,
who then were both at Sea;
Phil fought like old king Harry,
but from the Enemy
Poore Philip had receiv'd a shot,
through that part of the thigh,
Did joyn to's groin,
oh! that shot came something nigh.
Into the Surgeons Cabbin,
they did convay him straight,
Where first, of all ye wounded men,
the pretty Surgens Mate,
Though in this trim, unknown to him
did bravely shew her Art,
She drest, and kist,
the woful wounded part.
Which she did most mildly dress,
and shed her teares upon't;
He observ'd, but could not guess,
or find the meaning on't,
Although he wou'd in tears & blood
oft times on Mary call,
And pray, she may
be there at his funeral.
Fierce fights at Sea this Couple
did valiantly indure,
As fast as one did aime to kill,
the other striv'd to cure;
The souldier & the Surgens Mate
did both imploy their parts,
That they, each way,
did win all the Seamens hearts.
The Summer being ended,
that they could fight no more,
The ship came to be mended,
and all men went a shore;
Stout Philip lov'd the Surgeons Mate
so much he could not be
An houre, or more,
out of his company.
He often view'd her feature,
and gaz'd on every part;
(Quoth Philip) such a Creature
is Mistress of my heart,
If she be dead, I'le never wed,
but be with thee for ever,
We'l walk, and talk,
Live, Lye, and Dye together.
Poore Mary full of passion,
to hear him prove so kind,
Orejoy'd with this Relation,
could not conceale her mind,
but fondly hangs about his neck,
her tears did trickle down,
Sayes she, I'le be
still thy true Companion.
Since providence hath vanquish'd
The dangers of the Sea,
I'le never marry whilst I live
unless it be with thee;
No womankind, shall ever find
my heart to be so free,
If thou, wilt vow,
to be as true to mee.
E're he could speak, she told him
I am thy dearest dear,
Thy Mary thou hast brought a shore
and now thou holdst here,
This man's attire, I did but hire,
when first I followed thee;
Thy Love, I'le prove,
but no Surgeons Mate am I.
He flung his arms about her
he wondred, kist and wept;
His Mary he did hold so fast,
as if he would have crept
Into her soul and body too;
his eyes in joy did swimm,
And she, as free,
was as fully fond of him.
They both rid towards Worc'ster,
to shew how they had sped;
But upon the Road they heard
her Father he was dead,
Two months at least after he prest
the Farmers son for slaughter;
In tears, appears
the sad duty of a Daughter.
Philip having cheer'd her up,
they rid directly home,
Where after many a bitter cup
the Marriage day was come,
Which they in state did Celebrate
the Gallants that were there,
Were grave, and brave,
all the best in Worc'ster-shire.
Thus may you by this Couple see,
what from true love doth spring
When Men love with fidelity
their Mistriss & their king:
When maids shew men, true love agen
in spight of fortunes frowns,
They'l wive, and thrive,
for such crosses have their crowne.
                                                                                          FINIS.
                                        The Constant Lovers
A Man of mean Directions
Of late in Worcestershire,
Was guided by Affection,
To Court a Lady fair.
Whose Eyes shin'd like the Morning Dew,
Upon a Lilly bright;
She had Grace in her Face,
Was pleasing to the sight.
She was an only Heir
Unto a Gentleman,
And all her Father's Care,
Was to match her unto one:
But the Farmer's Son being handsome,
To gain the Lady's Heart,
In so far that no Ransome,
Could ease a Lover's Smart.
But when her Father came to hear,
And understand the Thing;
Then said he, I will free,
My fine Daughter in the Spring;
The Spring time being come and gone,
There did a Press begin;
And all her Father's Care,
Was to press the Farmer's Son.
No Money shall be taken,
Said she, if it be so,
For I will never tarry here,
But along with him will go.
on the twenty-third of April,
She writ a Surgeon's Part.
With Bagle and with Instrument,
To all true loyal Heart.
With Bagle and with Instrument,
A Surgeon's Part to try,
Then said she, I will be
Where the Cannon Bullets fly:
On the twenty third of May,
Then did the Fight begin;
In the Forefront of the Battle,
There stood the Farmer's Son.
Who did a Wound receive,
in thick part of this Thigh,
In his Veins near his Reins,
There it pierc'd something nigh;
Then to the Surgeon's care,
He was commanded straight,
The first that he saw there
Was the Surgeon's Mate.
And when that he had seen her,
And view'd her in every part;
then said he, one like thee,
Once was the Mistress of my Heart;
If she be dead, I ne're will wed,
But stay with thee for ever;
And we will love, like a Dove,
And we'll live and die together.
I'll go to thy Commander,
If he'll set thee at large
Ten Guineas I'll surrender,
To purchase thy Discharge;
So they went both together,
And in a little space,
She met with his Commander,
And to him told her Case.
He pleased with the Gold,
Soon set the Farmer free;
And she brought him to England,
Over the raging Sea;
And when she came to her Father's Gate,
And there had knock'd a while,
Then out came her Father,
Who said, here stands my Child.
Which long Time hath been missing,
I thought to see no more;
Then said she, I've been seeking,
For him that you sent o're;
And since that I have found him,
And brought him safe to shore,
I'll spend my Days in England,
And cross the seas no more.
Oh Daughter, I am sorry,
For the thing that I've done;
Oh Daughter I am willing,
That he shall be my Son;
Oh, then they were married,
without any more delay,
And now the Farmer's son,
does enjoy his Lady gay.

That the later text came from the earlier is incontrovertible. Moreover, the later “Lovers” play their story manifestly cleaner and straighter than their progenitors in The Valiant Virgin.

With this particular text, the process of recomposition continued into the nineteenth century. On broadsides from about 1800 we find the London Heiress, a further abbreviation of the story which has three telling changes: (1) it relocates the hero's wound from his thigh to his breast, carefully side-stepping any hint of the original's cheeky focus on the sailor's groin; (2) it edits out the homoerotic innuendo in the earlier texts by omitting the wounded hero's pledge of loyalty to the surgeon's “boy”; and (3) it betrays throughout an increasing confusion and uneasiness about the heroine's gender disguise.

                                        London Heiress
In London lived an Heiress unto a Gentleman,
And all her Father's care was to wed her to a man;
The farmer's son being handsome, he gain'd the
          lady's heart
They were so close engaged no ranson [sic]
could
          them part.
When her Father came to know his daughter's foolish
          mind
He said unto his daughter you must be other ways
          inclin'd
For spring time is drawing near and press time
          coming on
And all the father's care was to press the farmer's son
But when this lady came to know of her father's
          cruelty,
She said unto herself, my love, I soon will follow
          thee,
I'll dress myself in man's attire and after him will go,
I'll boldly plough the ocean where the stormy winds
          do blow.
On the Fourth of October, the battle it began,
In the front of the battle they plac'd the farmer's son,
Where he receiv'd a dreadful wound, which pierc'd
          him to the heart,
O! said he, where is she that would ease me of my
          smart.
Unto the Surgeon's cabin they had this lad convey'd,
There was no one to wait on him but the Surgeon's
          serv[ing] maid;
And when she turned herself around, he view'd her
          every part,
O! said he, one like thee, was once mistress of my
          heart.
You are very right young man, she said, your freedom
          I'll enlarge,
Here is fifty guineas for to clear you of your discharge;
then she went before the Captain, & fell upon her
          knees
She bought her love, and brought him safe over the
          raging seas.
When she came to her father's gate, she kneeled there
          awhile
Then her father said unto her now I see my own dear
          child
The child I have been wanting these seven long years
          & more
She said, I have been looking for the lad that you sent
          o'er.
And now since I have found him, all on my native
          shore,
We will live at home in peace and never sunder more.(56)

These three ballads, conscious reworkings of a single text, set before us a fascinating transformation. The Valiant Virgin—a humorously ironic text which exploits in all directions the enacted “punning” of the heroine's disguise—becomes the London Heiress—a straightforward love song which plays down any hint of innuendo and seems on the verge of doing away with the transvestism altogether. Indeed, this progression in which The Valiant Virgin becomes The Constant Lover of Worcestershire and then the London Heiress provides a revealing case study. As we shall see, an increasing sentimentality and uneasiness with the disguise characterize the later ballads and actually signal the waning of the Female Warrior motif in Balladry.

But such transformations of sentiment were not always the rule as old ballads became new ones. Often balladmakers brought their audiences a new song simply by cropping an old one in ways which left the tone of the original unaltered. For example, a balladmaker of the eighteenth century turned The Seamans Doleful Farewell, an eighty-line black-letter ballad from about 1690, into Billy and Nancy's Kind Parting, a much shorter “slipsong,” which was published in various forms—usually of twenty or twenty-four lines—in the nineteenth century.⁵⁷ The shorter song has been widely collected as a folksong among twentieth-century singers in Britain and North America. A glance at the opening lines of a few sample texts testify to the song's lineage. The seventeenth-century ballad opens:

Farewel my dearest Love now must I leave thee,
          to the East-Indies my Course I must steer,
And when I think upon't sore it doth grieve me;
          let nothing possess thee with doubt or with fear.(58)

Billy and Nancy's Kind Parting appears in James Boswell's collection of mid-eighteenth-century chapbooks and begins almost identically:

Farewell my dear Nancy, for now I must leave you
          and to the West Indies my course I must steer,
I know very well my absence will grieve you,
          but my dear I'll return in the spring of the
year.(59)

And so does Molly and Johnnie, which the traditional performer Frank Knox sang for MacEdward Leach at St. Shott's, Newfoundland in the 1960s. Knox's version begins:

Said Molly to Johnny I'm now going to leave you
Bound to the West Indies my long course to steer
Don't let my long absence now grieve you or trouble you
Oh my darling I'll be back in the spring of the year.(60)

The longstanding folksong strain in the history of the Female Warrior ballads is occasionally evident in eighteenth-century texts.⁶¹ Knox's Molly and Johnnie exemplifies the non-commercial song tradition which held onto the Female Warrior long after she and the commercial ballad sheets had disappeared from the streets of Britain and America. But a handful of Female Warrior ballads that happen to survive in manuscripts of the eighteenth century show that already at that time the ballads were vigorously passed around—as one would expect they would be—in non-commercial channels. Manuscripts of this period that contain versions of Female Warrior ballads illustrate this personal level of the heroine's popularity. Among them we find, for example, Percy's famous Folio Manuscript of the seventeenth century with its oral version of Mary Ambree,⁶² a 1745 teenager's diary with a meticulously penned text of The Loyal Lovers Garland undoubtedly copied from a broadside;⁶³ an imprisoned American sailor's journal of the Revolutionary War era with scrawled versions of The Silk Merchant's Daughter and The Maid's Lamentation in Bedlam;⁶⁴ a continental soldier's orderly book with irregularly spelled copies of Johnny and Molly and The Valiant Maiden.⁶⁵

By 1800 the Female Warrior flourished in a demonstrably longstanding, coherent, complex, and multi-layered tradition. At the apex of her popularity, this originally lower-class heroine was engaging the interest not only of her longstanding broadside- and chapbook-buying public, but that of polite antiquarians and patriotic theatre-goers as well. But this widespread fashion for Female Warriors in ballads, chapbooks, and theatrical entertainments was soon to ebb. … Despite its obvious popularity at the outset of the nineteenth century, the Female Warrior did not prevail for long as a commercial song motif. By the middle of the century female soldiers and sailors were no longer the stuff of “hit” songs. Shortly thereafter they were rarely seen at all anywhere. What explains this shift in popular taste and imagination? To some extent, changes in marketing brought about changes in the style and subject matter of all street ballads as newspapers took on the task of journalism and popular songs became increasingly tied to the music hall.⁶⁶ But even more important for the demise of the Female Warrior motif was the marked change in experience and people's view of it. The Female Warrior played her part in a world and worldview that have disappeared. … [T]he idealized “Mary Ambrees,” “Polly Olivers,” and “Wounded Nancys” of balladry slipped out of the popular fancy sometime in the nineteenth century.

Notes

1. I use the term “early modern era” in this study to designate that period of time in Britain (and Anglo America) between the Elizabethan and the Victorian ages. The Anglo-American Female Warrior appeared in printed street ballad tradition around 1600, became a popular convention by the eighteenth century, and remained commercially popular until the nineteenth century. The apex of the ballad heroine's popularity is that long “eighteenth century” to which scholars customarily refer, bounded on the one side by the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and on the other by the end of the Georgian era in 1837. My discussion—like the ballad tradition itself—sits astride this long eighteenth century. While my center of focus is this period, my discussion will necessarily extend both back in time from it and forward as the topic warrants.

2. For a text of this ballad, see Bagford Ballads, I, 308. …

3. While the three phases of popularity outlined here are derived from my study of ballads in the broadside and chapbook era, the same patterns are discernible in popular songs of our own time, though electronic media have considerably quickened the process. D. K. Wilgus has observed the parallels between the broadside song milieu and the radio and recording industry. See his Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959), p. 430, and “An Introduction to the Study of Hillbilly Music,” Journal of American Folklore, 78 (1965), pp. 196-97. The current terms I use here, “hit songs” and “golden oldies,” while anachronistic, are nevertheless functionally appropriate.

4. The ways the ballad Female Warrior reflects the facts and preoccupations of the time which produced her will be examined in chapters 5, 6, and 7. For now, it is enough to observe that at the time that Mary Ambree was a controversial success, there was a general preoccupation with women and cross-dressing. For an overview of this early seventeenth-century controversy see Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), pp. 494-97.

5. See Arber, IV, p. 216 and ii, p. 496, and Rollins, Analytical Index, Nos. 2803 and 2804. See also “Tradelist of William Thackeray” in Bagford Ballads, I, pp. liv-lxxvi and the 1754 catalogue of Dicey in Thomson, p. 298.

6. The Merchant's Daughter of Bristol was consistently re-registered along with Mary Ambree. See Rollins, “Analytical Index,” pp. 147-49, Nos. 1692, 1707, 1708, and 1709. See also “Tradelist” in Bagford Ballads, I, liv-lxxvi and the catalogues of Norris and Brown (1712) and Dicey (1754) in Thomson, pp. 283 and 294.

7. The registration of Female Warrior ballads illustrates the ephemeral character of these songs. The registering of ballads with the Company of Stationers continued from 1557 to 1712. Of thirty Female Warrior ballads published during this early phase, only four were ever registered with the Stationers' Company—two in addition to Mary Ambree and The Merchant's Daughter of Bristol. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 386 and 471.

8. This ballad was never registered. The lines quoted are from a London version of 1678-80, Harvard, 25242. 67PF, II, no. 193. See Dugaw Cat., p. 481. Events in the ballad took place in February, 1644/45. (See Roxburghe Ballads, VI. p. 283.)

9. For actual women soldiers of this period, see Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1984), pp. 195-96.

10. For texts of these ballads, see Roxburghe Ballads, VII, pp. 728 and 730. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 814 and 818. For the tune to The Famous Woman Drummer, see Simpson, p. 775.

11. Price is known to be the author of The Famous Woman Drummer. Ebsworth (Roxburghe Ballads, VII, p. 729) proposes that he wrote The Gallant She-Souldier as well. However, it is unlikely that he wrote two such similar songs. More probably he modeled his ballad on that of a contemporary, or vice versa.

12. Both ballads exploit a bawdy use of the word “drum” in seventeenth-century parlance. On the facticity of seventeenth-century street literature, see Lennard Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). Restrictions on printing during the Puritan Commonwealth encouraged this journalistic mode. See Rollins, “Martin Parker,” pp. 129-32, and Leslie Shepard, The Broadside Ballad: A Study in Origins and Meaning (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962; Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Legacy, 1978), p. 56.

13. From a 1680s London broadside entitled An Admirable New Northern Story, in Euing Collection, No. 8, p. 9. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 507-8. This broadside gives the tune as “I would thou wert in Shrewsbury,” probably the “New Northern tune” of The Valiant Commander. This ballad, like Mary Ambree, remained a revival favorite through the eighteenth century, appearing in both the Stationers' Register and printers' catalogues.

14. Arber, II, p. 496; Rollins, Analytical Index, no. 2804. For discussion of this partnership, see Thomson, pp. 70-72.

15. “Thackeray Trade List,” Bagford Ballads, pp. liv-lxxiv.

16. For a list of ballads dating from the seventeenth century, see Dugaw Cat., pp. 82-83. To this list can be added several more ballads from late in the period.

17. A late seventeenth-century London text (1683-1706) is in Bagford Ballads, I, p. 247. See Dugaw Cat., p. 503. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 191.

18. A late seventeenth-century London text (1685-1700) is in the British Library, c. 22, fo. 176. See Dugaw Cat., p. 373. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 683.

19. A late seventeenth-century London text (1664-95) is in Roxburghe Ballads, VII, p. 546. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 598-99. For the tune see Simpson, p. 768.

20. An early eighteenth-century London text (1709-12) is in Harvard, 25242.68/pEB-B65H, II, 307r. See Dugaw Cat., p. 828. The tune is from Henry Purcell's 1690 opera, The Prophetess. See Simpson, p. 440.

21. A London text of the 1690s is in Pepys Ballads, VI, p. 301. See Dugaw Cat., p. 838. The tune is the same Purcell air used for The Woman Warrier, Simpson, p. 440.

22. Thomas D'Urfey wrote two stanzas of this ballad in 1689. See his New Poems Consisting of Satyrs, Elegies, and Odes (London: J. Bullord and A. Roper, 1690), p. 183. The song quickly appeared in a lenghtened broadside version. See The Maiden Warrier, Euing Collection, p. 331. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 475-76. For the tune, see Simpson, pp. 733-34.

23. Percy, II, p. 231.

24. Percy, I, p. 7.

25. Questioning of Percy's sources and his tinkering with texts began already in the 1780s with the acerbic attacks of Joseph Ritson in Observations on the First Three Volumes of the History of English Poetry (London: J. Stockdale, 1782), p. 11 and A Select Collection of English Songs, 3 vols. (London: J. Johnson, 1783), I, p. x. For discussion of what became a heated controversy, see Sigurd B. Hustvedt, Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain during the Eighteenth Century (New York: American Scandinavian Foundation; London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1916), pp. 157-200; Albert Friedman, The Ballad Revival (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 203-12; Thomson, pp. 113 and 125-27; and Stephen Vartin, “Thomas Percy's Reliques: Its Structure and Organization” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University Press, 1972), pp. 80-94. In 1868 the Folio Manuscript which was Percy's point of departure was published exactly as it survives. See Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, ed. John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, 3 vols. (London: N. Trübner, 1867-68).

26. Percy, I, p. 2.

27. Percy, I, p. 7.

28. On Percy's place in this “ballad revival,” see Friedman, pp. 185-232. See also Dianne Dugaw, “The Popular Marketing of ‘Old Ballads’: The Ballad Revival and Eighteenth-Century Antiquarianism Reconsidered,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21 (1987), pp. 71-90.

29. In Percy's lifetime the Reliques went into editions in 1765, 1767, and 1775. With his nephew he revised for a fourth edition which came out after his death. For discussion of the work's popularity, see Bertram H. Davis, Thomas Percy (Boston: Twayne, 1981), pp. 80-108. See also Friedman, pp. 200-2.

30. See The Valarous Acts … &c., printed for Joseph Hinson, Cambridge University, Madden Collection, III, no. 797, p. 199, and The valarous Acts … &c., Printed and Sold in Bow-Church-Yard, London, Harvard, pEB75P4128C, no. 250.

31. Dugaw, “Popular Marketing,” pp. 80 and 84-85.

32. See Thomson, pp. 288-99, and Dugaw, “Popular Marketing,” pp. 75-85.

33. The Vocal Magazine; or, British Songster's Miscellany … Volume the First (London: J. Harrison, 1778), pp. 156-57. The description of the contents is on sig. A2^r.

34. For discussion of these popular amusement parks, see Warwick Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1896). See also Richard Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1978).

35. On the relationship of streetsongs to theatre and music hall, see J. S. Bratton, The Victorian Popular Ballad (New York: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 27-28.

36. For a text of this song, see Roundelay, or the New Syren (London: W. Lane, n.d.), p. 14. See Dugaw Cat., p. 870. For information on James Wrighten, see Thespian Dictionary; or, Dramatic Biography of the Eighteenth Century (London: T. Hurst, 1802). The Female Captain was written before 1792 when Mary Ann Matthews Wrighten Pownall left Wrighten and went to America. See Who Was Who in America. Historical Volume 1607-1896, rev. edn (Chicago: A. N. Marquis, 1967), p. 493.

37. For a text of this song, see Songsters Multum in Parvo, 6 vols. (London: John Fairburn, n.d.), III, pp. 113. It is described as “written by Mr. C. Dibdin, and sung by Mrs. Dibdin, in character, with universal applause, at the aquatic theatre, Sadlers Wells.” The piece may have been performed in The British Amazons, a revue of 1803 which ended with a chorus of “female volunteers” doing military exercises. See Dennis Arundell, The Story of Sadler's Wells 1683-1977 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1978), p. 71. See Dugaw Cat., p. 868.

38. See Arundell, Sadler's Wells, p. 17. See also DNB, vol. XVIII, p. 614. For a recent facsimile of a 1750 edition of Snell's “life and adventures,” see The Female Soldier (1750) (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1989).

39. For a text, see Roxburghe Ballads, VIII-l, p. 146. See Dugaw Cat., p. 591. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 296.

40. An eighteenth-century text is in The New Play-House Garland, Harvard, 25252.6, Garland 55. The title of this chapbook links the ballad to theatrical performances of some kind. See Dugaw Cat., p. 768.

41. A mid-eighteenth-century chapbook text is in Harvard, 25274.2, XXVIII, no. 8. See Dugaw Cat., p. 765.

42. For a late eighteenth-century broadside text, see Harvard, 25242.85F, 21^r. See Dugaw Cat., p. 613.

43. An eighteenth-century broadside text is in Holloway and Black, p. 239. See Dugaw Cat., 638.

44. For a Scottish broadside text of about 1800, see Harvard, 25252.19, ch. 31. See Dugaw Cat., p. 846.

45. For a late eighteenth-century London broadside text, see Harvard, 25274.2, IV, 2. See Dugaw Cat., 406.

46. For a mid-eighteenth-century chapbook text, see Harvard, 25276.43.5. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 623-25. This is N-10 in Laws (p. 207).

47. See n. 11 above.

48. For an 1830s Catnach text of The Handsome Cabinboy which identifies the tune, see Huntington, 297337, I. See n. 42 above for a text of The Female Drummer. A manuscript book of the poet John Clare contains the earliest tune. It appears in Roy Palmer, The Rambling Soldier: Military Life through Soldiers' Songs and Writings (New York: Penguin, 1977), p. 163.

49. See chapter 1, n. 27 above on John Morgan's authorship. For an early nineteenth-century text of William of the Royal Waggon Train, see Harvard, 25242.71, 26r. I have found tunes only in recent folksong collections. See Dugaw Cat., 430.

50. An 1830s Catnach text of William and Phillis identifies the tune. See UCLA, No. 605. For an 1820s London text of William and Harriet, see Kentucky, V, 15. I have found tunes only in recent folksong collections. See Dugaw Cat., p. 517.

51. See n. 9 above.

52. For a seventeenth-century text of The Valiant Virgin, see Roxburghe Ballads, VII, p. 546. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 598-99. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 768. For The Bristol Bridegroom, see Roxburghe Ballads, VIII-l, p. 146. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 591-93. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 296.

53. For William of the Royal Waggon Train, see n. 47 above. An 1830s Catnach text of William of the Man-of-War is in Huntington, 297337, I. See Dugaw Cat., p. 426.

54. Ebsworth believed that Sterne had this ballad in mind when he wrote Tristram Shandy. His remarks posit that the ballad “suggested to [Sterne] a certain incident (and comment of Corporal Trim) concerning the wound received by the immortal Uncle Toby.” (Roxburghe Ballads, VII, p. 548). For discussion of Uncle Toby's wound, see chapters 21 and 25 of the novel.

55. The Valiant Virgin text here is from a late seventeenth-century London broadside in Harvard, 25242.67PF, vol. II, no. 195. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 768. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 598-99. The Constant Lovers text is from a mid-eighteenth-century London chapbook in Harvard, 25252.6, G.32. See Dugaw Cat., p. 605. The Bristol Bridegroom is probably also a reworking of The Valiant Virgin.

56. Harvard, 25242.4, I, 67. See Dugaw Cat., p. 611.

57. For a discussion of the origins of “slipsongs” and the role of the Diceys in popularizing them, see Thomson, p. 112.

58. From a late seventeenth-century London broadside in the British Library, c. 22, fo. 176. See Dugaw Cat., p. 373. For the tune, see Simpson, p. 683.

59. From a mid-eighteenth-century chapbook, Harvard, 25274.2, XXVIII, 30. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 377-78. This ballad is K-14 in Laws (p. 147).

60. Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive, MacEdward Leach Collection, no. 18. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 377-78.

61. For discussion of this interrelationship of traditional and commercial versions of ballads, see Dianne Dugaw, “Anglo-American Folksong Reconsidered: The Interface of Oral and Written Forms,” Western Folklore, 43 (1984), pp. 83-103. For discussion of the concept of folksong, see Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship, pp. 231ff. For a recent critical reappraisal of the concept, see Dave Harker, Fakesong: The Manufacture of British “Folksong” 1700 to the Present Day (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1985).

62. See Hales and Furnivall, I, p. 515. For discussion of Percy's acquisition of the manuscript, see Friedman, pp. 187-88.

63. “Elizabeth Williams, Her Book, 1745,” Harvard, 25252.8, p. 63. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 578-79.

64. George Carey, A Sailor's Songbag: An American Rebel in an English Prison, 1777-79 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), pp. 69 and 132. See Dugaw Cat., pp. 623 and 469.

65. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, “Orderly Book of Thomas Cole,” Boston, 1778 (Item 64, Handbook, AC966). See Dugaw Cat., pp. 401 and 768.

66. Bratton, The Victorian Popular Ballad, pp. 23-26.

Abbreviations

Arber: Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London: 1554-1640 AD, 5 vols. (London and Birmingham: privately printed 1875-94)

Bagford Ballads: The Bagford Ballads, ed. Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, 2 vols. (Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons, 1878)

Brown: Brown University, John Hay Library Collections

DNB: The Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee, 2nd edn, 22 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1906)

Dugaw Cat.: Dianne M. Dugaw, “The Female Warrior Heroine in Anglo-American Popular Balladry” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1982)

Euing Collection: Euing Collection of Broadside Ballads (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1971)

Harvard: Harvard University, Houghton Library Collections

Holloway and Black: John Holloway and Joan Black, Later English Broadside Ballads (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975)

Huntington: Huntington Library Collections

Kentucky: University of Kentucky, Martha I. King Library, Special Collections Department, Broadside Ballads

Laws: G. Malcolm Laws, American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song (Philadelphia: Publications of the American Folklore Society, Bibliographic and Special Series, vol. 8, 1957)

NYPL: New York Public Library Collections

Pepys Ballads: The Pepys Ballads, ed. Hyder Rollins, 8 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1929-32)

Percy: Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), ed. Henry B. Wheatley, 3 vols. (London: Swan Sonneschein, Lebas, and Lowrey, 1886; rpt. New York: Dover, 1966)

Roxburghe Ballads: The Roxburghe Ballads, ed. William Chappell and Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, 9 vols. (Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons, 1871-99)

Rollins, Analytical Index: “An Analytical Index to the Ballad Entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London,” Studies in Philology, 21 (1924), pp. 1-324 (rpt. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1924; rpt. Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Tradition, 1967)

Simpson: Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966)

Thomson: Robert S. Thomson, “The Development of the Broadside Ballad Trade and its influence upon the Transmission of English Folksongs” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1974)

UCLA: University of California at Los Angeles, University Research Library, Special Collections

Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship: D. K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959)

Yale: Yale University, Beinecke Library Collections