Bawdy folk song ideas

[Vivian Delaney]

Anyone able to point me in the right direction?

For reasons.

(Was thinking on the subject and came up with the below, but not sure if it's the right level of innuendo:
A lady, she went riding
Early one summer's day
For the lady had a yearning
To walk the woods in May

Now, I could not say
If she found what she did seek
But when she'd finished riding
She couldn't walk straight for a week.)

[Genevieve]

I'm assuming you're looking for Traditional Folk not Music Hall (if not, let me know and I'll do some more digging around the songbooks!)

Most of the ones I've been able to find are American (predominantly, I guess, because there's a tradition of performing such songs at Ren Faires) although a lot of them will have roots in earlier European folk tradition, for example the song is an evolution of the English song Whack Fol De Diddle Do (and has evolved still further into a sort of ren fair rap-battle, where instead of the "If all the young girls" couplets singers take turns in insulting each other's sexual prowess or flirting outrageously, usually alternating male/female).

Try replacing the world "Bawdy" with "Ribald" if you're not finding anything to your liking when searching, it brings up a few more options.

My personal favourite of the genre is The Widow's Promise, a version of which is ; it wasn't written until 1982, granted, but its roots are in a much earlier Aberdeenshire song, The Devil and the Feathery Wife

[Iain Menzies]

This is the only one off the top of my head that definitely existed at that time.

Edit: Tell a lie, here's some more that wiki tells me are old enough.

(not really bawdy enough, but meh.)


There's a pretty good list of folk music that would have been around at the time , but I cba to read through them to find humorous/dirty ones

[Vivian Delaney]

Thank you for the help - no more searching for now, but I have good leads

[Marie Darrieux]

Slightly late to the discussion, but this is pretty smutty, very similar versions were sung in the 17th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY3o7WZ1Uao