My daddy says I'm fine: gender bending, female desire and Willie o the Winsbury

The king he hath been a prisoner,
 A prisoner lang in Spain, O
 And Willie o the Winsbury
 Has lain lang wi his daughter at hame. O

You know it's going to be good when you get to fornication in the first verse. Willie o' the Winsbury, or Child100 - currently my favourite to sing at people whenever I get the slightest indication that they won't actually kick me out for doing so - makes no bones about the boning. I especially like the term "lang" in this context. This could easily echo the "lang" in the second line, and mean "many times over several months", or it could, in the economy of form of folksong, mean rather "all night", "several times" and "with foreplay". It give the relationship a very languorous tone  - this is not a case of:

He took her by the milk-white hand,
 And by the grass green sleeve,
 And laid her low down on the flowers,

It implies rather more a:

Lye still, lye still, thou Little Musgrave,
 And huggell me from the cold;

Anyway, if I can ditch my obsession with the type of sex folkloric characters are having for thirty seconds, one other thing I will say about this opening is that it leaves very little idea where the ballad is going. The kind of people who enjoy putting folkstories away in such frameworks as the Aarne-Thompson Motif Index* have real trouble categorising ballads that start with enthusiastic rumpy-pumpy between the daughter of a powerful man and her - what - toyboy? Take, for example, Brown Robin (Child97) which - in the three variations recorded by Francis Child - has three entirely different endings. In contrast, Willie o' the Winsbury is remarkably consistent.

What follows immediately is both expected and upsetting. Janet (yes, the king's daughter is another Janet) is interrogated by her father as to her 'wanness' made to strip. In doing so, reveals that she is visibly pregnant. Her father then interrogates her as to the father of the child, and his emphasis is telling: he suspects rape. He asks if the pregnancy is by "a man of might" or "any of the rank robbers/ that's lately come out of Spain". What is more, he also attempts to ascertain the eligibility of the child's father - asking whether he is a man of "mean" or any "fame", depending on the version.

Janet's response makes explicit my earlier reading. This was a consensual liaison - not as (arguably) in Tam Lin an acceptance after the fact. It is something she had sought, wanted and enjoyed:

But it is to William of Winsburry;
 I could lye nae langer my lane.

More interestingly, the social status of Willie is not entirely clear. Yes, in 100C and 100D, there is some reference that - of the King's retainers - he "should hae been the foremost man", while in 100I, he is "Lord Thomas" and clearly a power in his own right. However, in most versions his exact status is unknown, and in 100F he is described as the King's serving man. Aside from in 100I, what is important here is that Janet has slept with a man who is perceived as markedly beneath her, and who - directly or otherwise - is subordinate to the King's power.

With this in mind, (and in most versions) her father declares that Willie o' the Winsbury is totally getting hanged. So far, so predictable if we factor in the manner in which Janet's father has behaved throughout. What happens next is... curious.

Ballads, as a general rule, are not big on description. You might get a passing reference to "grey e'en", "green mantles" "golden" or "yellow hair", and occasionally "lily-white" body parts (remind me to do a blog on Bold William Taylor sometime), but it tends to be included in the general thrust of the action, an aside to provide a little detail, or level out the rhythm. In Willie o' the Winsbury we get an entire verse of it:

when he cam the king before,
 He was clad o the red silk;
 His hair was like to threeds o gold.
 And his skin was as white as milk.

This presence of this much description is consistent across seven of the nine versions. And, what does it tell us? That Willie is a striking, snappy dresser (also, rich), that he is blond (or possibly red-headed) and that he very fair. The version I sing (which is slightly different to any Child version) states that his breast was white as milk, letting us know that that red shirt was open at the neck, along with the strawberry blond hair and pale, pale skin...

Yes, this is exactly where your mind should be going.

What the audience are probably expecting here is some sort of sword fight or slanging match, where Willie reveals himself to be Prince in disguise, sweeps Janet up in his arms and rides off into the sunset. Instead, the King says this:

'It is nae wonder,’ said the king,
 ‘That my daughter’s love ye did win;
 Had I been a woman, as I am a man,
 My bedfellow ye should hae been.'

Again, this is consistent across the majority of versions. This is the King's first response, and it marks a transition from raging, "hanged he shall be" fury, to... offering this guy his daughter's hand in marriage, gold and earldoms?

The sexuality presented in folk ballads fascinates me because the multiplicity of recorded versions offer a glimpse of a variety of voices in discussion over the same themes and stories. However much a teller might claim to the contrary, all singers and storytellers adapt the material they learn to suit their own prejudices and those of their audience. It is in those negotiations that the true subversive potential of the folk tradition is permitted to emerge. A range of versions can almost be seen as a collective effort to thrash out the problematic societal implications of these stories: endings being changed, reactions being framed differently, sympathy being assigned in differing ways.

Yet, what is most amazing about these verses - Janet's enthusiastic consent, Willie's beauty and the King's recognition thereof - is their consistency across the versions. Willie o' the Winsbury does thrash out the acceptability of a vassal/heiress relationship, of parental benevolence/control, and Willie's relative humility/pride, but it seems to agree on three key points. Firstly, that women feel desire and sexual attraction, and that they are not necessarily drawn to feats of strength, but to male beauty. Secondly - considering the ballad has a consistently happy ending - that premarital** sex under those conditions was to be condoned, and the King's anger at his daughter's condition was unjustified. And thirdly, that it was okay for men to admit homoerotic attraction provided they expressed it in heteronormative terms.

To dwell on this last point for a moment: Willie's beauty is, in most versions, described in a way that is more typical of the women in ballads. He is not a "man of might" nor is he not brown skinned from being in the sun or fighting in Spain. He is a "bonnie boy", his fine hair dangles down and he comes "tripping" up the stairs. We focus upon his complexion, his golden hair, his silk clothes. Only in G is there any active quality to his beauty "He glanced like the fire [...] His eyes like crystal clear."

And while in A and H we get the verse quoted above, in most versions, the King's statement of attraction reflects this connection of beauty with femininity - hypothesising a change of Willie's gender rather than his own: "Gin ye were a woman, as ye’re a man". While this does, of course, play into the heteronormative assumption of 'active' and 'passive', 'male' and 'female' sexual roles, it actually reinforces the strangeness of what's happening here. In A and H, the King is merely admitting that Willie is such an attractive man that it causes the King to imagine the circumstances in which he could act upon that attraction. This alternative implies that Willie's beauty, and the response to it, is such that it transcends gender - that he can simultaneously be perceived as 'woman enough' for the King to desire him as such, and 'man enough' for him to be irresistible to Janet. Or perhaps that his gender is irrelevant when it comes to desire. 

The fact is that conceptions of gender, desire, sexuality are constantly in flux, and in this context romantic folk ballads become an archaeological resource which gives some indication of past ideas that fell within the realm of acceptable. Which makes Willie o' the Winsbury a good one to throw at people who like to vaunt truisms about traditional constructions of gender, as well as being raunchy and rather a lot of fun.

Anyway, here's a lovely version from LazyShark - go and give it some well deserved likes:

 

*for which I am duly grateful, mostly because it must have been an utter chore to compile. I admit to simplifying its usefulness and complexity here somewhat.

**note, not extramarital.

Sacred Vampirism in the Child Ballads

If anyone ever wants to buy me a present - and has a few hundred quid to spare on it - I wouldn't say no to a full text, hard copy of Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. A online version can be found on the superlative Sacred Texts website, but while this is arguably more practical for my daily researching needs, it does not have Child's notes, nor can it replace that calm, reassuring weight of the blue cloth volumes, the smell of the paper, or the joy you can get by just flicking through the pages and seeing what you can see.

That's how I came across 'Leesome Brand' (Child15), one of those little curios that lodges in your brain, needling you. Child recorded only two versions of it, and, although they share some motifs, B is much more like 'Sheath and Knife' (Child16) than it is like Child15A.

The story is.... odd. It begins with a mother lamenting that her son Leesome Brand left home at a young age (ten or younger), going to a strange land where the wind doesn't blow and the cocks do not crow. In this land he meets a girl who - despite being improbably young (eleven or younger) - is sexually active. When it became clear she is heavily with child, she and Leesome Brand steal some stuff (horses and her dowry) and flee her father's hall.

As they are riding through the forest, the girl goes into labour with that much used and wonderfully resonant declaration that her "back will gang in three!" After a little discussion about the distance from the town and the unavailability of a midwife, Leesome Brand offers to deliver the baby: The girl tells him to go off hunting because childbirth is women's business. Still, she gives the caveat that whilst he can kill whatever he wants, he mustn't touch the white hind, because the white hind is a woman. 

Enjoying himself hunting, he forgets about the girl until he sees the white hind. Racing back to where he left her, he finds her dead, the baby lying beside her (also dead?). He returns to his mother's hall, where she, overjoyed at his return, asks the reason for his dejection. He says he has lost a golden knife and its far more valuable golden sheath (if I had to pick one thing I love most about folk songs, it would be the unsubtlety of their sexual metaphors), but after crude symbolism proves inadequate, he explains that the lady he loves is dead, as is the son she had borne him.

What happens next is, strictly speaking, a relic miracle. Leesome Brand's mother has three drops of St Paul's blood, which, splashed upon the bodies, will restore them to life. Leesome Brand does this, and the woman and child are reborn,

as lively [..], 
As the first day he brought them hame.

 Now, I could spend years picking my way through this. Such a dark little ballad of love, of neglect, of loss. There is a lot about childbirth, about the relative statuses and antagonisms between women.  Like in 'Gil Brenton', another ballad that haunts me, the initially hostile mother-in law becomes the agent of her daughter-in-law's restoration. There is a lot about pre-marital sex and legitimacy. There is magic; both that which works (the blood) and that which does not (the White Hind).

Besides, the story is so poignant. That sense of lament, the mother's lament, the lover's lament...  Leesome Brand's support of the woman he loves, and how despite that love, his powerlessness to help her, even to understand her... Actually, it got to me so much I used a verse as an epigraph in Time's Fool, my own little tale of uncrossable gulfs.

And vampirism, of course.

Because it has to be blood, doesn't it? This isn't a prayer to Saint Thomas at Canterbury, it isn't a fragment of the True Cross (what better symbol of resurrection?) it is the blood of Saint Paul, the one who some traditions claim was crucified upside-down. What is more, it isn't merely contact with the relic that restores the life. The ballad is specific: three drops of blood - two for the mother, one for the son.

Christian tradition has a very conflicted view regarding blood, self mutilation and bodily injury.  On the one hand, it has inherited the (frequent) Old Testament injunctions against eating the blood with the meat, as well as Leviticus 19:28 ("You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead"). On the other, it is a religion based upon martyrdom. Christians are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb - the sacrament is (depending on your denomination) either literally, symbolically, or well-a-little-of-both, the blood of Jesus.  

The blood of saints, too, is powerful. The rituals of physical penance are often cited in the lives of Saints as a mark of holiness. It has been the cause of much worry in the church that the drawing of blood is seen as a visible mark of holiness. To be fair, when relics are venerated, what is more powerful than the blood? After all "the blood is the life" (Deuteronomy 12:23). After Becket's martyrdom, handkerchiefs soaked in his blood were sold as miraculous relics. 

But relics - at least in my limited understanding of these things - are incorruptible. Their power, coming as it does from sacred sources, is not diminished by their use. The sacrament renews with each consecration. The blood has been once spilt - to squander it would be sacrilege.

And, of course, there is the infamous 'Black Mass', where - one is told -  the cross upon the altar was inverted and human blood drunk from the chalice. Witches had familiars who came and suckled at their veins, giving them power over these humans, giving these humans powers beyond their lot. The promise of vampirism is the same: drink the blood of the right person, have the right person draw your blood and you will have eternal life. 

In his notes on the ballad, Child draws a comparison to the story The Transformation of a Maiden in to a Hind, where a girl is cursed by her stepmother and transformed into a hind. The curse can only be broken if she drinks her brother's blood. In the logic of story, it is her brother who shoots her and, at her request, cuts his fingers so she can be restored to her natural shape. He also references a Scandanavian ballad,
'Redselille og Medelvold', which follows a similar plot, but instead of the resurrection that we get in Leesome Brand, the protagonist buries the woman and her still living children, until their screams drive him to suicide. More concerns of the vampire genre - the dead coming back to seize the living. The curse that makes you prey upon those dearest to you.

A strange little ballad, Leesome Brand, one that asks more than it answers.

 Who is this woman who can be revived by blood? This precocious woman brought back from an uncanny land? The song begins as a lament,

MY boy was scarcely ten years auld, 

Whan he went to an unco land, 

Where wind never blew, nor cocks ever crew, 

Ohon for my son, Leesome Brand!

Yet ends 'well', or as well as these things ever do. The wording, too, is strange. They are as lively as the day he first brought them home. Perhaps folk ballads are not the place to analyse logic, but when Leesome Brand brought them home, weren't they dead?

(This article owes access to Child's commentaries to http://betterknowachildballad.wordpress.com/)