The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #106455   Message #2199734
Posted By: GUEST,PMB
22-Nov-07 - 03:24 AM
Thread Name: Song on a taboo subject?
Subject: RE: Song on a taboo subject?
Homosexual acts were subject to the death penalty in England up to the early 19th century, and imprisonment thereafter up to the 1960s, so like MCP's excellent example above, the only place to look would be in 'last confessions'- no point in looking for a sympathetic treatment. Perhaps the woman in MCP's example was lucky she wasn't proceeded against as a witch- though the outcome would have been the same.

You don't (surprise?) get many sympathetic songs about paedophilia either- only murder ballads like Fanny Adams- though there is one song hanging on the edge of my memory that includes the line approximately "I know not what has come over me that I should love a child".