Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: MAG
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 07:39 PM

One last comment before I have to head    back to work: It's worth seeking out good songs to balance the ones I don't like rather than convincing people not to like the ones I don't.

There is a certain mind-set that doesn't like Stan Rogers, finding him sexist. To paraphrase Margaret Nelson: (yes Phil, that Margaret) If someone can come up with a line as poetic as

Is this the face that won for her the man

Whose amazed and trembling fingers placed that ring upon her hand

then OK.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Uke
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 08:06 PM

Thomas,

I wonder, listening to any style of music is about enriching your life in some way (even simple enjoyment), good for general happiness. Is Trad Folk socially regressive though? I reckon not more than any other style (think about the range of lyrics in rap music, from good to bad).

Because trad songs are often so seemingly distant from modern life, it makes you do a bit more thinking about the original context, espeically if you want to sing it truthfully. It often tells us things we don't want to know, can't easily grasp, about subjects that are 'difficult'. For me it's one cure for all the mass generalisations about the past.

And, surely, having to think about things from another point of view is the essence of 'socially progressive'? That there's many sides to every story.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 08:28 PM

Absolutely Positively So! ...except that I'm not really OK with a judgement placed on two generas in comparison... Trad songs contain a massive wealth of information, morality, second and third hand experiences, rhymes, and reasons... Encyclopedia Balladica of daily life. I *love* to sing them...

But maybe there's just a scoshe to much of yesterdays ... ttr

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 08:42 PM

But there've been a whole lot of yesterdays, and there's never more than one today, and of course no tomorrows at all. One definition of tradition is democracy extended to include the past.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Uke
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 08:57 PM

Very nicely put McGrath.

I wonder how generous folk in 100 years will be in speculating as to our motives and 'prejudices' today.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 10 Dec 03 - 09:24 PM

I couldn't agree with you more MoH... and... Tomorrow is worth striving for with sound historical perspective and a very open mind... ttr

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Gurney
Date: 11 Dec 03 - 05:13 AM

Still can't understand why anyone should view traditional songs as any kind of template for living or social development.
They are history. Each is a cameo of a time and place and the thoughts of the songwriter. They are more educational than most 'official' history books because (the Rev. B-G and his like aside) they are unrevised, not politically corrected, and the winners didn't write them all. I prefer unrevised history to cloud cuckoo-land, don't you?

I'm also not sure that violence toward women is anything other than bullying someone weaker. I've never hit a woman in my life, but glib and persistant women have had me shaking with rage, to the point where I WOULD have fought a man, had I been suitably lubricated.
Some people can live alongside a powder-keg, others HAVE to light the fuse. I'm not saying all the battered females brought it on themselves, but that I don't understand how they can live in a tiger's cage.
Sorry about all the cliches.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: CapriUni
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:52 PM

Like many who have posted to this thread, I am not certain that misogyny is more prevalent in trad than any other human sentiment. But I'll set that argument aside for the moment, and propose this idea instead:

Whether a song is mysogynist or not can depend a lot on who is singing it at the moment. I, for example, really like "The Devil and the Farmer's Wife" (Especailly the version found here (Recorded by Stekert, Songs of a New York Lumberjack, Child #278).

As a woman, I hear that song as a song of survival -- a woman who is bartered away by her husband fights back, and protects her family from the Devil's harrassment from that moment on (a 17th C. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). After all, having been "to Hell and back" is often seen as an admirable quality (at least, when speaking of traditional male roles, such as soldiering).

Granted, the "Folk Process" had been at work in my brain, and I had altered the lyrics slightly over the years without even realizing it, in ways that made the woman act more in self-defense than out of sheer spite. But I imagine I'm not alone in that, and I wouldn't be surprised if my foremothers had done the same while churning the butter or working the treadle on a spinning wheel...

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 10:41 AM

I see the Devil and the Feathery Wife as a song of true love. Think about it.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: GUEST,Nellie Clatt
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 10:48 AM

I first heard Martin Carthy sing this song at the Topic Folk Club in Bradford when it was at the Star in Westgate, he introduced it as ' a song about true love '

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: CapriUni
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:45 PM

I'm not as familiar with "The Feathery Wife" version of Child #278, so I will have a closer look.

So, is it true love between the wife and her husband, or the wife and the Devil? ;-)

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:50 PM

Between the wife and the husband of course!
Wonder how many of you would roll naked in feathers and droppings to save your old husband from his own idiocy.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 03:03 PM

'The De'il and the Feathery Wife' (so called in Peter Buchan's Secret Songs of Silence) is a very rare ballad and is no relation of any kind to 'The Devil and the Farmer's Wife'; though both have the words 'devil' and 'wife' in the title. It appeared on 18th century broadsides (three examples can be seen at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads) as

The politick wife: or, The devil outwitted by a woman.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: CapriUni
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:35 PM

Hmmm... yeah. There is no explicit mistake made by the old man in #278 -- except, of course, handing his wife over to the Devil in the first place. If she bops him a couple of times on the head when she returns, I don't think a jury of her peers would ever convict! ;-)

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 03:59 AM

There are a few out and out nasty songs like the Man of Burningham Town. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the ending was clever.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: CapriUni
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 04:29 PM

I don't know The Man of Burningham Town, and based on your description, I don't think I want to. Lucky for me, however, I'm under no obligation to learn or sing every song out there.

Which, of course, brings us back to the opening question of this thread. Personally, I don't think misogyny is more prevalent in trad than any other human sentiment. When you have a genre that, by it's very nature, has contributors from every segment of human society, you'll get a body of songs as wide and varied as humans themselves.

I just refreshed this thread because I was surprised that the song I'd been singing as an anthem of women's strength didn't quite read that way in the "Official" version frozen in text.

The moral of this story (perhaps)? The singer gives at least as much meaning to a song as the lyrics or the melody.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 04:35 PM

Also known as the man of Burnham Town, it's one that Martin Carthy used to sing (Byker Hill and Selections has it) until he realised it was sheer nasty. I think it has a great melody and lyrics until the wife-beating.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 05:54 PM

Oh !"£$%^&*()_+

History should not be conditioned by rectitude. Current conduct should.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: michaelr
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 12:14 AM

Oh, so it's OK to "take your sword and pin her against the wall" (Matty Groves/Little Musgrave), but hitting her is non-PC? I think Martin Carthy missed the mark on that one.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:33 AM

The focus is different.
Burnham Town really leaves no room to doubt that (according to it)wife beating is a good thing which is why it's so horrid.

Subject: RE: Why is misogyny so prevalent in trad?
From: Grab
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:42 AM

Oh, so it's OK to "take your sword and pin her against the wall"

No, but since said wife has seduced a young lad, she ain't exactly pure as the driven snow. Classic "getting what you deserve" song, even if it isn't ethically correct - there's more to it than your typical murder ballad, most of which are frankly no more than "snuff music" (to coin a phrase).

Seriously, what is the point of songs like "Pretty Polly", "Banks of the Ohio", "Bruton Town", "Weilla Wailla" (sp?), etc? Someone kills someone else for no apparent reason, and that's it. And from the songs I hear, there seem to be more of them on the misandry side (evil men) than on the misogyny side (evil women). Maybe this is bcos men are more usually the active parties in songs (due to a historical prevalence of male singers), but anyway. Personally I find both types equally distasteful.

And the whole question is pretty bloody daft, to be honest. It's like someone asking "Why are pro-IRA songs so prevalent in trad?" Well DUH! some IRA supporters write them, but you're not going to hear a single one sung by a Loyalist or a Brit. So they're only prevalent amongst bigoted people who like singing things like that.

Graham.