Jack-a-Roe & Women Warriors

I went to the tailor shop today (as an aside run by a wonderful elder Italian gentleman, Joe Giullo, Rte. 9 Shrewsbury, near The Bean Counter).  Of course the rest of the day I was singing (and playing) "I went down to the tailor shop to dress in men's array..." from Jack-a-Roe, a traditional song that the Grateful Dead kept alive for millions.  A particularly interesting version can be heard here.

The lyrics are very dense - a wealthy merchant's daughter is courted by many, but Jack-a-Roe, a sailor, was her true love.  He left to sail in a war so she went down to the tailor's shop to dress in men's clothing and snuck aboard a boat as a man.  After the war, she found her true love wounded, got a doctor to heal his wounds, and they got married.

As I often want to do with traditional songs, I looked up the history.

Jack-A-Roe also occurs as Jackaroe or Jackaro. It is one of a number of closely related songs that also occur as Jack Monroe, Jack Munro, Jack The Sailor and The Love of Polly and Jack Monroe, possibly also as Jackie Frazer. Possibly the earliest recorded version of a similar song is titled Jack Munro and is held in the ballad collection of the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. This dates from roughly around 1800.

Here's the original ballad, posted as a bill, between 1774 and 1825, as a war protest.

Jack Munro ("In Chatham town there liv'd a worthy merchant man ...") 

The theme of the woman warrior is not unique to the West, of course.  A similar ballad around 400 AD  inspired Mulan.