Malinky

Warriors all

One year earlier, in the first mid-career installment of his old folk song kick, Good As I Been to You, Dylan had covered similar territory with the Female Warrior ballad “Canadee-I-O.”

“Canadee-I-O” by Bob Dylan (Spotify) (Lyrics)

I don’t know where Dylan first heard this particular song of maritime cross-dressing and forgiving captains, but preceding Dylan’s performance, one of our favorites, Nic Jones, had recorded the song on his album Penguin Eggs.  Jones’s performance is characteristically outstanding.

“Canadee-I-O” by Nic Jones (Spotify) (Lyrics)

John Wesley Harding includes a rock and roll arrangement of the tune as well on his tribute album, Trad Arr Jones (somewhat ironic that the arrangement is actually quite different.)

“Canadee-I-O by John Wesley Harding

“OK, OK,” you say, “What does this all have to do with murder ballad?”  Neither of the two songs above include killing, merely martial bravery from an unexpected source, and an interesting tale to sing to listeners assembled around you in a pub or on a streetcorner.  

Well, first let’s consider what Malinky left off, by contrasting it with another excellent performance from Scotland; this time from Adam McCulloch.  His version may just be my favorite of the bunch.  [Update:  McCulloch credits the American band, Uncle Earl, as an inspiration for his version.  You can listen to their performance on Spotify here.]

I won’t reproduce the entirety of McCulloch’s lyrics, as the difference is really at the end after the killing:

Adam McCulloch

And when the captain he did hear
Of the deed that she had done,
He made her a ship’s commander
Over a vessel for the Isle of Man

And now she’s on the quarterdeck walkin’,
Sword and pistol in her hand.
And every time she gi’es an order
Sailors tremble at her command.

Here is the difference, right?  There is an end after the killing.  Malinky’s version leaves us with an abrupt ending at the death of Taylor.  The scene is left rather ragged, with uncertain consequences and we imagine what happens next for Sarah or for Taylor’s newly-made widow.  McCulloch’s versions, like those we listened to in the previous story provide a tidier resolution.

“Female warrior ballads are success stories,” writes Dianne Dugaw.  “Inevitably their masquerading heroine–a model of bravery, beauty, and pluck–proves herself deserving in romance, able in war, and rewarded in both.”  Although there is murder in some, and tragedy in others (Dugaw mentions that there are some versions of “Jack Monroe” or “Jack-A-Roe” in which the heroine ends her life upon finding her lover dead on the battlefield), the theme of these ballads is success, not tragedy.

I Shot the Commodore

In the previous post, we benefited from the contribution of Jo Freya as an English source for “William Taylor.”  Freya also recorded another famous Female Warrior ballad, “The Female Smuggler.”  

Female Smuggler “The Female Smuggler” by Jo Freya (myspace)

“The Female Smuggler” by Jo Freya (Spotify)

While I think “The Female Smuggler” is a little less compelling as a tune than “William Taylor,” it does give another example of a Female Warrior ballad that depicts the heroine actually shooting someone.  Unfortunately, perhaps, Freya obscures this.  Where she inserts a bit of a bridge, other versions contain a crucial bit of narrative.  Her bridge verse is as follows:

Jo Freya

Morning, sweet world, it’s a beautiful day
The sun it is shining, birds they are singing,
Everything’s going my way.

The text of the original ballad that Dugaw cites has the following verses in this space:

Not far she travell’d before she espied
A Commodore of the blockade,
He said — surrender! or you must fall,
But the Female Smuggler said, I never fear’d a ball.

What do you mean? said the Commodore,
I mean to fight, for my father’s poor,
Then she pulled the trigger, and shot him through
Did the Female Smuggler, and to her father flew.

The Female Smuggler is captured, and fortunately for her, and the Commodore too, he survives.  Upon discovering at trial that she is a woman, the Commodore begs the court’s mercy on her behalf, and then proposes marriage to her, and off they go for her father’s consent.  Not exactly a shotgun wedding, but…

Janus, Mars and/or Venus, and Odysseus

Photo by K. Bigger

What distinguishes these Female Warrior ballads, at least the ones we’ve listened to today, from murder ballads strictly considered is that they are comedies, not tragedies.  They are comedies in the classical theatrical sense of ending with a wedding or, as we have seen, a field commission.  They are not cathartic in the same sense.  More “Oklahoma” than “West Side Story.” 

Whether or not “William Taylor” is immediately humorous, there is something deliberately implausible about the story, and like its siblings here, it is focused on a happy ending.  Not so, obviously, with murder ballads.  While Dugaw and others can make a credible case that there is much going on in Female Warrior ballads that represents the exploration and manipulation of gender roles in an expanding and changing society, it’s also true that these songs end either very traditionally (in marriage for the heroine) or in gentle farce (military promotion).  The promotion in rank in “William Taylor” almost certainly intended to be a comedic element in the context of the time.  To my mind, this lends credence to the theory discussed in the last post that “William Taylor” was a latecomer to this ballad tradition, and may represent more of a gentle parody of the original, street-born ballads.

Dugaw goes on to argue that ballads such as these represent narratives that flow back and forth between the military, male sphere of Mars, and the erotic, female sphere of Venus; and, to capture another classical trope, in most cases represents some version of a hero(ine)’s journey, with all the transformation and reflection on the dominant culture that that entails.  

The broadside illustration I included at the start of yesterday’s post included a subtitle for “William Taylor” calling it “The Tragedy of the Press-Gang: A True and Lamentable Ballad
call’d Billy Taylor, shewing the fatal effects of Inconstancy.” This, too, seems to me to be a conscious bit of hyperbole, because if there ever was an uncomplicated song about a murder, this is surely it. Very little anguish is involved, just quick decisive action. Only Malinky’s version gives us reason to think that anybody but Taylor’s new bride is at all upset by the action, at least among the living, that is, or that things might go amiss for our heroine.