Hmm. . . .

Other than songs (example: A Lusty Young Smith) in collections such as Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: Or Pills to Purge Melancholy (very ably rendered by Ed McCurdy in the series of recordings entitled "When Dalliance was in Flower and Maidens Lost Their Heads"), I can't think of all that many songs in which the female protagonist is hell-bent on getting laid. A few, yes, but certainly balanced by the women in such songs as Blow Away the Morning Dew or Lovely Joan, wherein the man approaches the maiden with rumpy-pumpy on his mind, and milady leads him on, gets him to give her a ride home before agreeing to do the deed, then pops inside and locks the gate, leaving him to howl and paw the ground outside in the cold. As a matter of fact, in Lovely Joan, she cons him into boosting her up on his horse, then rides off laughing, leaving the horny young man to trudge home.

On the one hand, you have women such as Barbara Allen, who at first is a bit bitchy because she feels that Sweet William has wounded her pride eventually dying for the love of Sweet William, who, because of her rebuff, managed to beat her to it. Or the female protagonist of Anachie Gordon who went to extremes to get back at her parents for forcing her forsake a man she loved and marry a man she didn't care for; she hauled off and died on her wedding night. Then, when Anachie Gordon returns a few hours too late and finds that she's dead, he curls up and expires. I think a census would provide a roughly equal number of men and women dying spontaneously for love (or lack thereof).

On the other hand, in ballads such as The Outlandish Knight (Child #4), or its American version, The Willow Tree, when the young lady encounters what we now call a serial killer, she manages to trick him and then tosses him into the drink and leaves him to drown. And then, of course, as is mentioned above, there are the women who dress as men and acquit themselves quite well in battle or on shipboard. If these songs were made up by men, then it seems to me that would reveal a preference for strong, self-reliant women.

I'm not too sure that one can make really meaningful generalizations about women in folk music any more than one can in real life.

Don Firth