“The Female Haymakers,” a cruel seduction song, is one of a family of “careless love” lyrics linked by the burden “no, not I.” While most of these are, like the Coverly ballad, male-oriented and unconcerned about the plight of the woman and child, a version on a slip ballad sheet in the Madden Collection, “The Newfoundland Sailor,” is written from a brave woman’s point of view. In the final verse, the woman declares
My child and myself contented will be
And strive to forget him as he has forgot me. (5:247 #1223)
In the Coverly text, the class prejudice theme is loosely applied. At first the woman declares that though she is raking hay she is more elevated than her suitor. When their child is born and she asks him to marry her, he turns her own words against her, saying “you are of a low degree, and I am of a high.” The rhythm of the text is quite irregular. In personal discussions, Samuel Bayard said that he had collected this text in Pennsylvania in the twentieth century (see also Roud).
Like “The Female Haymakers,” the lovers in “Cold Winter” are from different stations in life, but here the speaker tells of her steadfast love for her Alonzo even though he is “below [her] degree.” He is apparently en route to European (“low lands”) battlefields. A touch of the “female warrior” theme enters the narrative when she speaks of wearing “livery” and going on the “carracks of Calgare” with fringes and gold rings. However, she is constrained and “here in cupid’s chain, I’m obliged to remain.” A narrator then describes her vain wait for the fleet, and she continues the song with her declaration of faithfulness. The text was widely printed on nineteenth-century English slip ballads (Roud).
