While mulling over the "auctioning off wives" thread, I began wondering about other complicated public situations in the 18-19th century that might have made it into folk songs. Two that come to mind are the rule (British) that if a woman in court could prove she was pregnant she couldn't be condemned to death; and there was another that I am hazier on that if you could read a psalm the same was true. I think there was a specific psalm that everyone memorized and parroted off if they got into trouble, faking reading. Does anyone know of any folk songs picking up on these legal wrinkles, for example getting pregnant in a hurry to avoid the scaffold?

Yours, Peter