Traditional songs re. homosexuality

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Once Famous
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 12:48 PM

I don't know of any American traditional songs, thank God.

wouldn't really want to hear them either.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 12:47 PM

There is reputed to be an old Pathan (Afghan) song whose refrain means:
There's a boy across the river
With a bottom like a peach
But alas I cannot swim.

I can not confirm this from any of my Afghan friends(to tell you the truth, I'm too polite to ask if they know it).

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 12:42 PM

"but on the other hand many things (including homosexuality along with sexual activity in general) did not become as intensely suppressed until the Victorian era."

Actualy there were a lot less executions for buggery in the Victorian era.

As to the Pretty Cabin Boy it's a bit hard to maintain privacy. Any number of ways she could have been discovered.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Celtaddict
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 12:25 PM

Kipling's image was certainly masculine or even could be considered "hypermasculine" as was the general idealized image of the classic Englishman of his era, particularly the colonial ("pukka sahib" and such, magnificently sent up by P.G. Wodehouse among many others), but many twentieth century readers and analysts find his intense man-to-man bondings to be rather suggestive of the homoerotic. This has been an issue in, of all things, the Boy Scouts, as Kipling was evidently a hero and model for the early Scout organizers and leaders, and if you read, with contemporary sensibilities, the earliest editions of Boy Scout handbooks and such, there is a good deal of strong discouragement of anything remotely having to do with sex in general but much that is at least ambiguous about male-male relationships.
We must remember we are reading Victorian-Edwardian era material with twenty-first century sensibilities. In the case of the older ballads, even more sociological change has ensued, but on the other hand many things (including homosexuality along with sexual activity in general) did not become as intensely suppressed until the Victorian era.
That said, the nature and much of the strength and beauty of traditional music, and particularly the old ballads, is that they can and do speak to other generations and cultures; that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Attention paid to particular aspects of humanity change, but the humanity itself is universal. So it hardly matters, in that way, what Kipling or any other originator, known or unknown, had in mind when writing the song. If there is a good song that can be interpreted in a way that speaks to someone today, it can and will be. While the specific history of a song, and the meaning of archaic or unfamiliar terms within it, are fascinating to me, the idea of what a song "really" means is elusive at best.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: GUEST,Lighter at work
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 12:04 PM

Even more striking than "The Handsome Cabin Boy" is "Short Jacket and White Trousers."

Bawdier and intended as humor is "The Shaver," given in bowdlerized form by both R. R. Terry and Stan Hugill.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 11:56 AM

I can't imagine how anyone could start a thread with a title like RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality and not fully expect to have direct lyrics on the subject posted.

And I don't read Glynis's initial post as suggesting otherwise. She even asks about lyrics which are explicit rather than implicit.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 11:11 AM

Not traditional, but one of Cyril tawney's songs has a homosexual theme(can't remember which).I think people are being a little coy here if they can't think of homosexual traditional songs, but I'm waiting for Glynis to give the OK to obscenity in her thread before I start.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Abby Sale
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 11:08 AM

Greg, post what you will. Chances are theyre in the database, anyway.

You may be thinking of the many sea-type songs that include a verse similar to:

                The cabin boy, the cabin boy,
                The dirty little nipper;
                He filled his ass with broken glass,
                And circumcised the Skipper!

(In Good Ship Venus, Christopher Columbo, North Atlantic Squadron, anyway)

and

Columbo had a second mate he loved just like a brother,
And every night below the decks they bung-holed one another.

As above indicated, though, serious occurances in ballad is pretty rare. I've always thought the possibility in Bessie Bell was a real one but other explanations are equally or more logical.

Immediately, the one that jumps to mind is the oblique reference in "The Tailor's Breeches."

While not _about_ homosexuality, it shows a common knowledge of it &
enough comfort with the topic to (implicitly) mock homosexuals. Tailors are considered fair game to mock. They are comical just by virtue of their professions. Much of the jest, however, is that the tailor might be thought a homosexual because he is forced to go home wearing the tavern-maid's skirts. (Clearly, cross-dresser = gay in the song.)

       Oh, how shall I get home again?
       They'll call me `Garden Flower,'
       And if ever I get my breeches back
       I'll never dance no more.

Several sailors' songs have the same comic ending of the sailor slinking off down the street in dresses - Fireship, eg, and also The Merchant's Son.

"Bessie Bell and Mary Gray" (Child #201, dating at least back to 1646)
in some of the older texts shows a much expanded story over MacColl's
two verses or the nursery rhyme versions. They've clearly committed
some grevious sin, probably along with the young man from the village.
(Megage a trois?) Bad enough, anyway that it kept them from burial in
consecrated ground. Not suicide & extramarital sex alone wouldn't be
enough.

Child says the action occurs in Lednock, Scotland and that tradition
there specifically locates their graves and carries the extra-textual
information that the two were both daughters of local lairds, very
attractive and that "an intimate friendship subsisted between them."

McClintock's fairly serious bawdy version of his The Big Rock Candy Mountain, "The Appleknocker" is certainly about male-on-boy sexual predation. So the acts are lined out clearly but it's not any sense of "same-sex love."

There are two tunes by Scott Skinner, in memory of General Sir Hector Macdonald, who committed suicide when on his way to face court-martial for homosexual activity. At the time Macdonald was Scotland's national hero; his army career had included winning the battle of Omdurman (despite his superior, Kitchener) and rescuing the Boer War campaign from the disastrous mess Kitchener had made of that (in pipe music terms, see "The 91st at the Modder River" or "The Highland Brigade at Magersfontein", both marking these defeats; Macdonald had been wounded at Magersfontein).

Another "if only" verse is in

WILLIE O' WINSBURY:
But when he came before the king
He was clad all in the red silk
His hair was like the strands of gold
His skin was as white as the milk

"It is no wonder," said the king
"That my daughter's love you did win
For if I was a woman, as I am a man
My bedfellow you would have been"


So, such references are pretty rare and oblique or comic when they do come up. I checked keyword @homosexual (an actual existing keyword) in DigTrad and there are no references for it.

There are probably more specific references to buggering sheep then there are to any form of inter-human "unnatural sexual acts" in English language traditional song. OTOH, moving to Greek, Turkish, native American, etc tradition where the notion is more institutionalized and you'd likely find lots of stuff.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 10:56 AM

I have to back off some on my last post, about The Handsome Cabin Boy. I think it was correct as far as it went, about the captain's wife. But I didn't follow the verse far enough.

Picking up that verse:

And now and again she slipped him a kiss
And she would have liked to toy
But 'twas the captain found out the secret of
The handsome cabin boy.

Just how did the captain find out the secret? If he thought initially that he was hiring a handsome boy, how did the discovery of the real sex come about? One can certainly infer that he saw his cabin boy as a sex object, and in exploring the possibilities discovered the real state of facts, and took advantage of them just as he had intended with "the handsome cabin boy".

So, Tradsinger, I agree with you (sort of), but for other reasons.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 10:19 AM

The phrase "passing the love of women" in "Follow Me 'Ome" is from the story of Saul & Jonathan (2 Samuel 1:26). They, too, were army buddies. I have never been in the service, but I gather from the literature that such relationships usually do not involve sexual activity, tho it sometimes happens if the parties have the right temperament & courage and/or are drunk.

There is what I take to be a comic reference to homosexuality in "The Shut-Eye Sentry": "There was me 'e'd kissed in the sentry-box / As I 'ave not told in my song, / But I took my oath, which were Bible-truth, / I 'adn't seen nothin' wrong." The sergeant was drunk, and the sentry shut his eyes & thought of England. (I don't know if that one has ever been set to music, but I wouldn't mind having it.) Also, my reading of "The Mary Gloster" is that the dying magnate's spoiled son was queer; but a queer friend of mine thinks he was just a sissy.

I cannot think of any traditional song in which homosexuality *as a preference* is mentioned; but there are a few bawdy songs in which homosexual *activity* is described, in a polymorphous-perverse spirit, as evidence of sexual exuberance. In "The Pioneers", they fuck sheep, "nor care a damn if it's a ram"; Tom Bolynn, surprising his wife in bed with a friend, offers to sleep in the middle; and it is allowed that the time the Highland Tinker "fucked the butler was the finest fuck of all".

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: It is the fate of fools to amuse their enemies and bore their friends. :||

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 09:54 AM

Tradsinger, I don't think one can read homosexuality into The Handsome Cabin Boy.

The captain's wife (along with the listener) has observed that:
a: The "cabin boy" has become pregnant and had a baby
b: All members of the crew have denied responsibility
c: There's only the captain and herself left to look to.

Her comment that "It's either you or me has betrayed the handsome cabin boy" is ironically expressed. Since the wife could not have impregnated the "cabin boy", it must be the captain to blame. In effect, "It's down to us, and I couldn't have. Where does that leave you, my dear?"

Of course earlier in the song the wife had looked at the "cabin boy" and "she would have liked to toy", but that was under the impression that this was indeed a real young man, so no homosexual content is there.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 09:32 AM

Been reading Kipling all my life and haven't found any homosexuality in "Follow me Home" or indeed any others. It's strictly about the powerful comradeship between men, especially soldiers. Anyone who has been in the army can tell you the ties you form with your mates are very strong.
Anyway, doubt there are really very many folk songs, if at all, about homosexuality. Do remember that homosexuality only become openly accepted fairly recently. It used to be illegal and very much a taboo.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: CET
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 09:22 AM

I don't think you can read homosexuality into "Follow me Home". It certainly deals with love between men, but Kipling did not have the erotic kind of love in mind when he wrote that poem. I think he wanted to write about comradeship, particularly between soldiers who have (presumably, since this isn't dealt with in the poem) seen active service together, and the grief that the soldiers he knew felt on the untimely death of a friend. "Ford o' Kabul River" has a similar theme.

Kipling was no prude, but I think this was one taboo that he didn't touch. Perhaps the Kipling scholars can prove me wrong.

Edmund

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Tradsinger
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 08:19 AM

I always think that "The Handsome Cabin Boy" has a hint of this. The Captain's wife says to him "It's either you or I betrayed the handsome cabin boy." Does that imply that the Captain's wife is really a bloke and could possibly be the father of the child? How else would one explain this line?

Answers on a postcard.

Gwilym

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 08:16 AM

I'd like to know - just titles if they're easy to find...

Actually no, quote the lyrics - surely nobody can be offended by traditional words. After all, everybody in the folk world is forward thinking and liberal, right?...

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Glynis
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 08:03 AM

Might be best if you PM me - if they're trad. songs.

Thanks

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 07:50 AM

I dont know how clean you want to keep this thread, but I could quote a number of traditional vulgar songs with quite explicit references to homosexual practises. Would you like me to post some of them here? I am quite happy to, but I thought I would check first.

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Noreen
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 07:38 AM

Betsy Bell and Mary Grey comes to mind- this thread discusses the lesbian associations of the song.

Also see earlier thread Historical gay/lesbian/bisexual songs?

Subject: RE: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 06:29 AM

Kippling is not quite traditional, but Pete Bellamy used to sing many of his songs to traditional tunes.
There is one he sang called Follow Me Home which was about the close bond of comradeship between men. It had the line, Surpassing the love of women.
Keith.

Subject: Traditional songs re. homosexuality
From: Glynis
Date: 25 Mar 05 - 06:18 AM

Does anyone know of any traditional songs which refer in any way to homosexuality?

It is possible that some songs - for example those relating to men going away to war, etc. - are from the perspective of a grieving lover of either gender.   

Does anyone know of songs where this might be explicit rather than implicit?

Has anyone else done any research into this area?