Woe to You, Women

DESCRIPTION: The noble singer complains that a servant he made his wife "hae lien wi your footman an' [so] you'll never lie with me." "You disgraced the name of my high majesty."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1905 (Greig/Duncan6)
KEYWORDS: infidelity marriage husband lover wife royalty servant
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Greig/Duncan6 1206, "Woe to You, Women" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Roud #5522
NOTES [785 words]: Roud lumps this with ("Good morrow, fair mistress") (David Herd, editor, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. (Edinburgh, 1870 (reprint of 1776)), Vol II, pp. 5-6). That song shares parts of lines and theme with Greig/Duncan6, but does not mention the footman and adds different details. - BS
I doubt that this is intended to be history, but if it is, we note that it is a poor fit for most kings of Scotland. If we look at the Stewart/Stuart dynasty, the kings and their wives are as follows:
Robert II (reigned 1371-1390) had two wives, Elizabeth Mure and Euphemia Ross; he had ten children by the former and four by the latter, and married both before becoming king. Both were noble although not royal (Ashley, p. 552).
Robert III (reigned 1390-1406) married Anabella Drummond. Although her father was a mere knight, she was the niece of the former queen Margaret Drummond (Oram, p. 198) -- but at the time of their marriage in 1366, there was no reason to believe that Robert III would ever be king. And in any case they had seven children (Ashley, p. 553.)
James I (reigned 1406-1427) married Joan Beaufort, who was a descendent (in an illegitimate-but-legitimized line) of Edward III or England and a cousin of Henry V, the king when they married. They had eight children (Ashley, p. 555).
James II (regined 1437-1460) married Mary the daughter of the Duke of Gueldres -- the first Stuart to marry a princess from outside the British Isles. They had seven children.
James III (reigned 1460-1488) married Margaret, the daughter of the King of Denmark; they had three children (Ashley, p. 561).
James IV (reigned 1488-1513) married Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII of England (the lineage from which the Stuarts eventually claimed the English throne), by whom he had six children (Ashley, pp. 564-565). There were apparently rumors that he had secretly married one of his mistresses, Margaret Drummond (Ashley, p. 565), but such a marriage, if it existed, was bigamous; we find a churchman lamenting James's refusal to give up mistresses such as Margaret (Oram, p. 235).
James V (reigned 1513-1542) married Madeleine daughter of Francois I of France and them Mary daughter of the duke of Guise-Lorraine (Ashley, p. 468). His only surviving daughter was Mary Queen of Scots, but his wives were both noble.
Mary (reigned 1542-1567, when she was deposed) did marry as her second husband Henry, Lord Darnley, who probably slept around -- but she was female and obviously didn't have a wife.
James VI, the last King of Scotland who was not also King of England (reigned 1567-1625 in Scotland, 1603-1625 in England) may have been homosexual; in any case, he does not seem to have strayed from his marriage to Anne, daughter of the King of Denmark (Ashely, p. 575).
Thus none of the Stewards fits the conditions of this song; none married servants, and most of the marriages endured.
There is an interesting analogy to the time of King David II (reigned 1329-1371), the son of Robert I Bruce. David first married Joanna of England; she died in 1262, having borne him no children. David then (in 1364) married Margaret Drummond; he was her second husband, and he divorced her in 1370. She wasn't exactly a servant, but she was well below his station.
There were, to be sure, some earlier kings with amazingly complicated love lives, but what are the odds that a song about someone who reigned before 1300 would have survived?
The closest genuine analogy I can think of to this is to Henry VIII and Katherine Howard, his fifth wife. She was fairly high-born, too, since her uncle was Duke of Norfolk (Scarisbrick, p. 378). But she *was* a servant of Anne of Cleves (Scarisbrick, p. 429), who was supposed to be Henry's fourth wife until Henry blew her off. Katherine proved a "high-spirited minx" (Scarisbrick, p. 375), and "she had been unchaste before her marriage; she took to adultery soon after it" (Scarisbrick, p. 431). It's hard to blame her -- she was a teenager, and apparently quite pretty; he was fat and worn-out and imperious (Scarisbrick, p. 431, by this time calls Henry "physically probably repugnant"). The details of the breakdown of the marriage seem rather obscure, but it ended with Henry executing her (Scarisbrick, p. 432).
Interestingly, Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, had also been a lady-in-waiting to wife #1, and ended up being executed on a charge of adultery (but one for which genuine proof is completely lacking) and wife #3, Jane Seymour, had been a lady-in-waiting to Anne. Thus Henry VIII was a far better candidate for the singer in this song than is any Scottish king. But why, then, is the song found primarily if not exclusively in Scotland? - RBW
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