Making the Perfect Home: Broadside Ballads and Advice to Women

Teaching your spouse a lesson

This ballad reveals the horrors of alcoholism and its damaging effects on the marriage of Biddy and Barney, two fictional characters who stage the narrative of this ballad.

By the end of the song, a solution to Biddy’s problem with her husband’s drinking is offered.

However, it is quite comical in nature…

...in her call to married women, Biddy gives the rather unconventional advice of sewing one’s husband into his bed sheets when he falls asleep drunk.

This, she seems to imply, will discourage any future bad behaviour.

Keeping a woman's wits about her

As part of National Library of Scotland’s Crawford Collection, which holds over 4,200 ballads dating back to the 16th century, ‘Old England to Her Daughters’ is a call to action.

It invites women to act ‘rationally’ and ‘steadily’ in repelling the French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars.

This broadside reminds its readers that women were traditionally considered to be of the gentler sex.

The text calls on women to ‘not be frightened,’ as well as to be ready to set a good example for their peers, and finally, to cooperate with the endeavours of the brave men who protect them.

Although most likely written by a man, this portion of the broadside takes on the voice of Britannia as the English Nation.

This viewpoint would have sought to appeal to a sense of national pride.

Keeping the purse strings tight

Addressing both husbands and wives, this broadside illuminates the intricacies of married life in the mid-19th century.

While primarily a ballad in which advice is directed towards the husband, this broadside instructs all married couples during this time period on how to successfully discuss household budgets.

Sally and Charles discuss their finances. As Sally recounts what she must purchase throughout the week for their family to live, Charles responds with dismay and resolves to have Sally return his holiday clothes.

The ballad ends with a warning to men who assume they understand their household finances before consulting their wives:

When women go to the market,
They find all things very high,
A little money goes a little way,
When there’s everything to buy.

This ballad offers us a peek into the realm of domestic life during the 1850s, and yet its content may still sound familiar to some of us today.

Relationships 101

This page consists of two broadside ballads: ‘The Woman that Conquered a Man’ and ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’

The former humorously dictates how a woman, whether single or married, should seek to ‘conquer’ a man by kicking him out of her bed, not letting him drink too much, and taking control of the finances.

‘The Last Rose of Summer’, on the other hand, takes a much gentler tone, offering its readers themes of loneliness, loss, and love.

The ending of ‘The Woman that Conquered a Man’, in a seemingly new-aged manner, even advises widowed women to find new men to conquer.

However, the most poignant and direct advice to women this ballad gives is in the very last line: ‘But mind that you do wear the breeches and then you will conquer a man.’

Even today, the common question of “who wears the pants?” in a relationship is still colloquially used by couples, continuing to signal defiance against standard gender roles within romantic relationships.

Why these two ballads were published on the same sheet is unknown, but their relationship to one another provides the reader with differing forms of advice to women as they conduct themselves in affairs of the heart.

What they both suggest, however, is that women are advised to continually think of themselves and their actions in relation to men.

Scandal and sin

This broadside ballad claims to be written from the viewpoint of Mrs McLeod, who was sentenced to death for committing forgery.

In contrast to another broadside on the same subject, in which she protests her innocence, this sheet provides readers with a detailed inventory of her crimes.

It is worth noting however, that Mrs McLeod most likely did not write either of these broadsides. Instead, both sheets were probably written by experienced broadside writers who knew that crime sells, and sought out different approaches to the same story.

Here, the author offers a small, but rather ominous, bit of advice to women with the words:

Take this Advice from me, for sure,
That tho' I've been a wicked Woman,
Mind I you tell the Time is coming,
If you don't leave your way of Sin,
And that curst way in Which you'r in.
Your End like mine, may come to be,
For to be hanged on a Tree.