Hecate, there's one book by Jo Stanley, Bold In Her Breeches: Woman pirates across the ages. I even have the memoirs of a woman who ran away from a good Russian home to enlist and ended up as an officer in the Imperial Army towards the end of the 19th century. She was found out and made to return to her family, but I don't think she ever married, and people held her in great respect.

Jane, I agree with you that there is a good deal to be learned from folksongs - but only if the way of thinking (the zeitgeist, so to speak) is there. I remember articles about all these "woman-disguised-as-man" songs where it is contended that what these women were in it for was following or re-finding their lovers. Now, to me, this is a typically male idea of a woman's motives. It seems to be inconceivable to them that men may not be the ultimate goal. I also think that probably many or most of the William Taylors of this world were written by men.

There are other groups of folk songs that can tell us a lot about the conditions women lived in. Take The Shearin's No For You: There are two very different versions, one holds the woman herself responsible for her 'downfall' of having a child out of wedlock and paints a dismal future for her in punishment. In other words, it looks at this woman exactly the way society has always done. The other version makes clear that the woman's pregnancy is the result of a rape; the man repents and offers to marry her (some wishful thinking there?). The woman's reaction isn't on record but it is fairly clear we're not expected to think she told him to go to hell, but she gratefully accepted and they lived happily ever after ... ahem! Yet this song was described (by a man!) as 'one of the tenderest love songs from Scotland' not too long ago.
Frankie Armstrong, Sandra Kerr and another woman (whose name has slipped my mind) put together a book of such songs in the Seventies and interpreted them from a feminist viewpoint. When there was no feminism, or when the idea that women are equal (though maybe different) hadn't taken root these songs were interpreted differently, of course. It certainly is an interesting and limitless topic!