Wow! I read your first post this morning Deborah and then went out for the day. I just came back to it now and noticed that it had garnered 45 posts during the day. Not a small number. Ignore Mbo, he's being grouchy all over the place, not just here.

The topic of feminism in folk songs is interesting and you've gotten some neat replies and songs to think about. A whle ago Peter T. started a thread about women performers and asked whether they faced hurdles in folk music similar to the ones present in other types of music. After looking through the programs for two festivals this summer I can certainly say that women performers represent less than 50% of all the performers in those festivals. That the prime times for performances, those with largest audience numbers for a solo mainstage concert, are overwhelmingly dominated by male performers. That both festivals had a token women's workshop of some kind, clearly labelled "Women...." but that workshops labelled "Songwriters", "Guitarists" are more likely to have no women in them...

Whoops letting the wine talk there.

However taking a single song alone and taking it apart isn't a great way to go about looking for an attitude present in such a large group as folk songs. As the discussion of Matty Groves has shown us its possible to take an old song and present in such a way as to emphasize a particular view point. You might like to check out earlier threads about folk song collecting. Certainly prevalent attitudes about women's place in society, and about proper relationships between men and women, helped dictate which songs got into collections and which didn't.

Personally I think that there are a lot more interesting and varied men and women in folk songs than there are in a lot of rock, pop music. Stereotypes exist but alternatives also exist.