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Female Highwaymen

© Stephen William Gray

I was looking for some song-writing ideas when I came across the story of Bonnie Grizelda in an old copy of Northumbrian magazine. Grizzy was the daughter of Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree. Her father was interned at Edinburgh's Tolbooth with Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth and their leader the Earl of Argyle for their part in the 1685 Presbyterian rebellion against the Catholic King James. Grizzy saved her father from the gallows by dressing as a man and robbing the mail coach which was carrying his death warrant.

In researching the story using Mudcat and alt.folk.uk I discovered that Grizzy was not alone in "dressing herself in man's attire" and going on the pad (i.e. becoming a highwayman).

The female highwayman song I was most familiar with was Martin Carthy's excellent ballad "Sovay":

Sovay, Sovay, all on a day
She dressed herself in man's array.
With a sword and pistol all by her side,
To meet her true love,
To meet her true love away did ride.

The heroine tests her true love's resolve by trying to relieve him of the gold ring which is a token of their love. It is lucky for him that he resists, else, in Carthy's version, she'd have pulled the trigger and shot him dead.

The song-collector Sabine-Gould collected a version of the song in Dorset and published it as "The Lady Turned Highwayman" in 1890. His version of the song has Sylvie as the heroine. There is also a Vermont variant featuring Janie. Alternate song titles include "Wexford City", "Gold Watch and Chain", "Nelly Ray", "Sovie, Sovie", "Silvia's Request and William's Denial" and "Pretty Sylvie Rode Out One Day".

A broadside ballad from circa 1690, "the Female Frollick" has a similar theme. This is an "Account of a young Gentlewoman, who went upon the Road to rob in Man's Cloaths, well mounted on a Mare." She operated near Ware, in Hertfordshire, on the main London to York road. The ballad tells of her encounters with victims from various trades and professions:

The next that she met was a tanner.
for loss of his money he cried,
And because he bawled in this manner,
she handsomely tanned his hide.

She took from him but a guinea,
and then met a tailor with shears,
And because the poor rogue had no money,
she genteely clipped off his ears.

A update on the theme is the Kipper Family's marvellous parody "the Male Female Highwayman". The heroine in this song has a different way of testing her love's constancy:

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