Hi,

Non-love woman's perspective. Well, not so much non-love but not on the theme of love, would be the fisherman's wife songs. Ewan MacColl has one, but I'm really thinking of another one that I just can't recall properly. (It's one in which she not just worries about her man each time he is out, but she sees her son is growing up, who wants to be like his da, and she dreads the day when she'll lose him to the fisherman's life.)

There are also some ballads about a relationship between a man and a woman where love does not enter into it, she having been captured by the elfin knight etc.. (Come to think of it: The majority of Scarborough Fair, if sung in full, is from a female point of view, of avoiding the first singer's advances.)

I wonder: In some times/places, it was not considered decent for a wife to speak her mind in public. Under such circumstances, would she have been allowed to sing? If not, different circumstances for her singing might have shaped her repertoire differently.

Bye
                                                                Mysha