Sarah Chapman
Throughout several of the Warrior Women ballads in Diane Dugaw’s collection, the authors use the word “tar.” Tar is mentioned both in a technical or practical sense, as a material used to protect the skin from ropes and the sea, as well as ia a metaphorical way, as a reference to perceived of masculinization and darkening/toughening of the skin of female sailors, or in which tar is used as part of a racialization of the women. By drawing attention to the use of tar to darken the skin of Warrior Women, some authors sought to connect assigned-female-at-birth sailors to people of color; seen as second class citizens at the time of publication. In this essay, I will be exploring both the practical and metaphorical applications of the word “tar” throughout several ballads including “Susan’s Adventures on a British Man-of-War,” “Banks of the Nile,” and “Young Henry of the Raging Main.”
The historical connection between tar, pitch, and the complexions of people of color can be traced back to late Medieval and Early Modern dramatizations of tarring and feathering, as well as the use of blackface in the theater to denote characters of “ethnic” backgrounds and comedic devil characters. The association of blackness with “degradation, irrationality, prideful lack of self-knowledge, transgression, and, related to all of these, folly” has been described in many scholars’ works (Hornback 47). This idea also permeated into mainstream culture of the early modern period, in venues like theater, folktales, and broadside ballads. Because of this preexisting association between tar and blackness, it makes sense that when ballads describe women who used tar to disguise themselves on ships, they are not only drawing on histories of sexism and misogyny but also racism and racial stereotyping. Thus, when the women follow their lovers to war or to sea, the judgements of the authors and audiences of the ballads are not just informed by gender but also by race. According to the OED, tar is “a thick viscid, black or dark colored, inflammable liquid obtained by the destructive distillation of wood…having heavy resinous odor and powerful antiseptic properties.” However, in the nineteenth century, it was also used as a figurative derogatory reference to someone of mixed black (or other POC) and white origin. Another earlier figurative use of the word includes “to dirty or defile with tar; in tarred with the same stick or stained with similar faults or obnoxious qualities.” Other common uses of the word include in tar-and-feather, “to smear with tar and then cover with feathers: a punishment sometimes inflicted by a mob on an unpopular or scandalous character” (OED v.1). In the ballads, most of the references to tar occur when the Warrior Woman describes what she will do to protect her skin from the harshness of the sea. For instance, “young Susan we are told put on a jolly sailor’s dress, and daub’d her face with tar” (Susan’s Adventures in a British Man-of-War), or “her pretty hands once soft as velvet with pitch and tar appeared in pain” (Young Henry of the Raging Main). In the case of Susan, the covering with tar serves as skin protection but also has an alternative purpose; to disguise her feminine features from the 900 other men on board the ship. “With her hands so soft she went aloft like a jolly sailor bold./ She kept her place with her pretty face bedaubed with pitch and tar” (764).
Susan’s Adventures in a British Man-of-War
“Susan’s Adventures in a British Man-of-War” is a short ballad containing the story of Susan, who follows her lover onboard a ship. She “put on a jolly sailor’s dress, and daub’d her face with tar, to cross the raging seas for love” (764). She proves to be a valiant soldier, “respected by the officers and all the jovial crew.”. During one battle, she is wounded by a cannonball which reveals her disguise to William, who never suspected her to be onboard the ship. In some readings of this ballad, Susan is bold and to be looked up to for crossing “the raging seas for love” and being “contented all bedaubed with the pitch and tar” (764). However, if we are reading the use of tar as an instrument of racialization, we can see Susan as someone who dons the disguise with a sense of irrationality, transgression, and “prideful lack of self-knowledge.” The wound she receives can be seen as the punishment for attempting to disguise her true nature (fair, white, feminine) into a rough and tumble darkened sailor. She is hit by a cannonball and is forever scarred by it, even as she marries her love. “He cried—I wish instead of you I had received that scar, oh, love, why did you venture on board of a man of war” (764). Unlike other warrior women in the ballads, Susan will be forever marked by her adventures on the British man-of-war. The racial ambiguity of the tar combined with the gender ambiguity in dressing as a sailor would make it difficult for her to return to a normative, white, heterosexual femininity without leaving traces of her time as a sailor. Her wound from the cannonball, as well as darkening of skin from the tar and life at sea would already label her as an outcast in a white, heteronormative society.
Susan uses tar in this ballad as a cosmetic item to disguise her feminine attributes, although her hands remain soft through “winds and tempests cold” (764). If we consider her use of tar as a cosmetic, we can look at this ballad through the lens of Early Modern thoughts on cosmetics usage. In the article “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England,” Kimberly Poitevin describes the ideas Early Modern people had around cosmetics usage, especially men. During this time period, with the rise of boy actors playing women onstage and the increase in trade between England and other “exotic” countries, like China and India, cosmetics were more accessible and widely used than ever before. English women would use products like arsenic- and mercury-based powders, as well as natural based products from flowers and animal extract, to accentuate differences between themselves and their foreign, darker skinned counterparts; making whiteness a visible English trait. This fad was highly influenced by Elizabeth I’s cosmetic practices, as she used heavy whitening powders to allegedly cover scars from a childhood illness. “Because cosmetics could be so easily applied and removed, though, women who made up also revealed color to be an unreliable marker of race, class, or moral truth, exposing the notion of race itself as artificial, a charade” (62-3). In using tar as a cosmetic practice, white women disguising themselves as sailors are reinforcing the idea of race as artificial. They transform from white women to darkened sailors with simply a change of clothes and application of tar; revealing that Early Modern ideas of race and class (in this case the lower class of a sailor) is an artificial construct.
Susan, in using tar to cover her skin, is creating an artificial identity as a sailor. It is unclear to the reader whether she is changing class or not, as in the beginning of the ballad she is just described as a “blooming maid.” However, in some of the other ballads in Dugaw’s collection, women clearly use their disguises as sailors or soldiers to class-dress as someone of a status higher or lower than their own. In Early Modern England, the skin was seen as a porous boundary into which substances could be absorbed. Anatomical texts of the period do not fail to mention pores that allow sweat to excrete from the body, but also allows other substances, like cosmetics, in (Poitevin 78). Female skin was believed to be more porous than male skin. If women painted it with too much product, it could seep in and cause blackening of the skin. Poitevin describes this in terms of cultural anxiety:
“In imagining an unwanted blackness seeping through the skin, these discourses could encode fears of racial contamination as well. The function of the skin in maintaining a boundary—between inside and outside, but also between races—clearly breaks down here, as paint applied to the surface of the skin sinks beneath it, blackening the male “seed,” which in turn contaminates and blackens the skin of the offspring. The African ancestors who paint to blacken their skins are also in that moment feminized: endowed with the same “spongy” skin of the women…they are penetrated and polluted by blackness.” (8)
Using pitch and tar on her face, Susan is creating a waterproof boundary between her skin and the elements of the sea. Unlike other cosmetics that could seep into the skin, the resin-like material of the tar stays sticky on the skin thus preventing anything else from coming into contact. In this way, Susan is preserving her whiteness and femininity by putting this barrier on her skin several times throughout the ballad. Nothing “foreign” can creep in, even as the ship sails to “the walls of China,” a decidedly exotic location where whiteness is not the dominant race. Her skin, and therefore her femininity, could not be contaminated due to the protective properties of the tar. The ballad, as well as these Early Modern ideas of cosmetics changing the race of the wearer, also invites the possibility that the tar, meant to be a barrier, could seep into her skin, changing Susan from the outside in. This complexity and contradiction of ideas reflects the notions of race in Early Modern England: complex and potentially problematic.
Young Henry of the Raging Main
In “Young Henry of the Raging Main,” we see a different property of the tar; one that causes blistering and burning on the skin. In this ballad, the Warrior Woman, Emma, is pleading with her sailor love, Henry, to go with him on his voyage from England to India. He argues that she might be “cast away,”, but she tells him that she may “attain great honor.”. “Then on board the brig Eliza Henry and his Emma went; /she did her duty like a sailor, and with her lover was content” (497). Unlike Susan in the previous ballad, Emma follows her lover onboard with his knowledge; thus, does not need to use tar as a cosmetic device to fool her lover. Emma simply puts on the sailor clothes and uses the tar to protect her “pretty hands once soft as velvet.” The use of tar, especially pine tar, in the naval industry was common during this time. Tar is known for its antiseptic, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory effects when applied directly to the skin. According to several medical studies, pine tar is effective in treating skin diseases like psoriasis and eczema (Barnes and Greive). Current products created with tar are not known to have any lasting carcinogenic properties, although back in the Early Modern period, it would not have been purified or sterilized for use on skin like it is today.
The reference in the ballad to Emma’s hands “once soft as velvet with pitch and tar appeared in pain,” may not be from the use of tar itself on her skin, but rather the combination of tar and pitch and the painful process of removing it. Young Henry is referred to as “a youth call’d England’s Pride,” and when Emma proposes that she come with him on his adventures, he tells her “’tis a folly, love” (497). Although Emma successfully navigates her way into the sailor life with Henry, her hands still remained soft, but covered with the pitch and tar. The act of venturing on a ship was considered a folly by wider society, especially because she was a woman, although she and Henry looked fondly upon their adventures once they returned to England and got married. However, the rough work of being a sailor may have had an adverse effect on her skin, even though the tar seemed to have provided the natural barrier to ropes and other hazardous materials.
Once dried, the combination of pitch and tar becomes extremely sticky and difficult to remove from the skin safely. The act of Tarring and Feathering was a popular act of humiliation and punishment in both England and America in the 17 and 18 centuries. From the beginning it was associated with sailing, as iIt was first used by Richard the Lionheart in 1189 as a punishment for thieves on board his sea vessels. The thieves would have boiling pitch dropped onto their bodies and a bucket of feathers dropped on after that (Burns).
Not only did tar evoke race in darkening the skin of sailors, but it was materially connected to racial power structures as well. The slave trade, which was fully active during the time these ballads would have been written, played a significant role in the production of tar for use in England and the Americas. In the early nineteenth century, most of the pine tar used for maritime purposes came from the Carolinas. This region is fertile in pine trees, from which sap and resin can be siphoned. It also utilized the cheap labor of slaves to become more productive and profitable. “Industrial slaves” who worked in a specific industry like logging or turpentine production were seen as a more modern counterpart to “agricultural slaves” working in cotton or tobacco fields. While painted as a bettern alternative to agricultural slavery, industrial slaverys were often subject tosubjected workers to longer hours and harsher working conditions than those working a plantation (Outland 28). In order to make sure the wood was kept at a constant temperature for several days as the pitch was being harvested, a team of workers would have to stand watch and monitor the temperature of the fire as the wood was turning (Outland 42-3). These enslaved workers would work in small teams of men, often without the privilege of seeing their families for years on end.
Considering the difficulties of producing pitch and tar, using it as a disguise like some women in these ballads seems frivolous, and it can therefore highlight the frivolity some might perceive in their disguises overall. The connection between the production of tar and the uses of tar must have been known to those working in the naval industry; especially those who frequently travelled between England and the Americas. What does this knowledge mean for the women to use tar on their hands and faces as a disguise? In putting this impermeable substance on their skin, are they assuming the identity of the lower class, or even as slaves? The practical uses of waterproofing and antiseptic properties of tar are fine excuses, but what are the ethics of these choices? Did the women in these ballads have a choice in the matter or were they just doing what was necessary to stay with their loves and survive, no matter what the racial or class implications could be? In using what is essentially blackface, how do these white women benefit from racism?
The Banks of the Nile
In the ballad “The Banks of the Nile,” we encounter some of the racist and colonialist stereotypes reinforced by British imperialism. Billy has been called into service by the government. His lover, Nancy, tries to convince him to let her come with him on the journey, to which he replies, “for government has ordered no women there to go, for government has ordered, the king he doth command, and I’m bound on oath, my love, to serve on foreign land” (415). This statement reinforces the British idea of the Great Chain of Being: God, King, Man, Woman, Slaves. Nancy is told that her waist is too slender, complexion too fine, constitution too weak, “for the sultry sun of Egypt your precious health would spoil” (415). In this sense, Billy appears to be simply protecting her from the dangers of the battle that will happen on the Banks of the Nile. Dugaw puts two versions of this ballad together under one title here. The second version, while containing a similar story line, has more explicit racial references to Africans. “We must forget our own sweethearts beside our native soil,/ and go fight the Blacks, and Heathens on the banks of the Nile” (416). This variant’s specific reference to Heathens reflects an attitude about race forged early on in British, and European culture: that black is the color of the devil. The OED defines heathen as “Of an individual or people: holding religious beliefs of a sort that are considered unenlightened, now esp. ones of a primitive or polytheistic nature.” In the British mind, this is a word to describe Africans who often observed non-Judeo-Christian religious practices.
In “The Folly of Racism: Enslaving Blackface and the ‘Natural’ Fool Tradition,” Robert Hornback explains the connection between race, damnation, and folly by examining Early Modern plays that have recorded uses of blackface characters. “Blackness in these mystery plays was instead associated less with evil (at least as we know it) than with folly, madness, and an absence of that divine gift, the “light” of reason. The overtly foolish Devil of the mystery play tradition contained, then, what was surely a significant development in the history of racism; here was not simply a black devil’s fall into the depths of hell but, more significantly, a very particular depiction of his descent into the degradations of folly via blackness” (49). The connection between black people and the term “heathens” was well established in the culture by the time of the ballad’s release. “The Banks of the Nile” specifically references the folly and irrationality of Nancy wanting to accompany Billy into this battle. In this situation, men are to go to war to defend their country, and women are supposed to stay home to look after the homestead. “Let a hundred days be darken’d, let maidens give a sigh, twould melt the very elements to hear the wounded cry” (415). By accentuating racial hierarchies through nationalist and racist language, the ballad also places responsibility on the men to look after women on the battlefield, should they decide to follow them.
According to a note Dugaw wrote in the sources for this ballad, “The Banks of the Nile” has been connected to the 1801 Battle of Aboukir in Egypt, and the “Dixie’s Isle” versions of the ballad has been connected to the American Civil War. The 1801 battle was part of a campaign of the British Navy against Napoleon and the French army; an attempt to stop Britain from gaining more territory in Africa. In the second version of the ballad, Willy (the variation of Billy), mourns the loss of many soldiers to this battle ground. “My curse attend the war, and the day it first began,/ it has robbed old Ireland of many a clever man,/ it took from us our true-loves, the protectors of our soil,/ to fight the Blacks and negroes on the banks of the Nile” (416). In other words, the soldiers would rather be at home with their families than fighting a campaign against these “heathens” who have taken many good Irish lives. Hornback describes the historic connection between slave and sinner; the rationalization of slavery came from the idea that dark skin must be a sign that a person had sinned in the face of God and therefore been cursed (Hornback 64). Of course, this reasoning provided a scapegoat for British slave traders who justified capturing and enslaving African people with the flimsy excuse that they were working off their debt to God. The slave trade depended on a world view in which Blacks were lowest on the Great Chain of Being, reinforcing stereotypes of Africans as inhuman and beastlike.
American Influences
These ballads, a reflection of Early Modern British culture, have had critical influences on American ideas of race and slavery. The use of “tarring and feathering” as an act of humiliation endured for hundreds of years, causing lasting damage in America during the civil rights movement. White supremacists used tarring and feathering to embarrass and sometimes kill Black activists. Before that, in the nineteenth century, the association between racism and tar was well established. In the popular children’s story, The Tar Baby, popularized in America by Joel Chandler Harris in his Uncle Remus stories, Brer Fox creates a baby out of tar to trap Brer Rabbit. When Brer Rabbit punches the tar baby for its lack of manners in responding to his question, his hand gets stuck in the baby’s body. Eventually the Fox comes back and as punishment, throws Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. This allows Brer Rabbit to get free from the Tar Baby and continue on his merry way.
According to Robert Wagner, in his book The Tar Baby, a Global History, the inspiration for the Uncle Remus stories came from the romanticized tales of plantation life told by the fictional Uncle Remus, a jovial black man who befriended white children to tell them tales of his ancestors. There were instances of plantation owners using tar patches to prevent slaves from stealing produce to feed themselves or their families from the farms that they were working on. Slaves were neither “deracinated or submissive” in their quest for food, rather they were survivors. “The fact that tar was used as a police technology under slavery undoubtedly has some relevance to the story,” says Wagner. “The fox uses the tar baby to trap the rabbit, and this sticky, black material would have held special meaning for slaves who had experienced tar as a police technology. But, of course, there are many, many other ways in which tar takes on a special symbolic resonance in the story” (quotd. in Martyris). While Harris’ publication of the Tar Babystory came after these ballads would have been written, like many folk stories, there have been many similar tales told all over the world. It is possible that Harris was influenced by racial ideas of tar at the time; allowing him to introduce the character of Uncle Remus to white Americans. As was discussed earlier, tar being used to darken the skin and disguise women’s class, gender, and (potentially) race was well documented in ballads featured in Dugaw’s catalog.
Conclusions
In looking at all three of these ballads, we can see a connection between the ideas of women who are insistent about going to war with their lovers, and the perceptions of race in the long eighteenth century. Susan and Emma both use pitch and tar to disguise themselves and go on the adventure with their lovers. Susan does it without her lovers’ knowledge, which ends in a dramatic reveal of her sex via cannonball, whereas Emma knowingly goes on the “Raging Main” with Henry, so they have fond memories to look back upon when they return to England and get married. They ignore the warnings of their lovers who say they have soft hands and a pretty face, which the sea would be too harsh against. Nancy, in “Banks of the Nile,” is told that her constitution is too weak and her skin too fair for the harsh conditions of Egypt. We never see her go to war with her lover, who insists that the duty to his country must come before his woman’s desire to be with him.
All three of these women demonstrate Hornback’s idea of the “Folly of Racism”: the “more demeaning, buried tradition of early blackface comedy, one that associated blackness with degradation, irrationality, prideful lack of self-knowledge, and transgression” (47). What is the connection between the use of tar in these select ballads and the ideas of race and femininity in Early Modern England? The ideas of blackface performance and the association of tar with people of color also permeated into mainstream culture in venues like theater, folktales, and ballads. Because of this idea, the women described in the ballads who used tar to disguise themselves on ships can be equated to the shameful and irrational people of color. Their irrationality is emphasized by the women following their lovers to war or to sea, even when it is not wise of the women who are too delicate or fine. These ideas have also travelled from Early Modern England to the colonies when they were founded, and were written into the Constitution of the United States in clauses like the 3/5ths agreement. Like the “Tar Baby” story, these ideas have contributed to centuries of degradation of people of color, especially those sold into slavery. Even today, we can see evidence of these latent ideas with issues like red lining city plans and the welfare system aimed at poor, black Americans. Something as innocuous as using tar on the skin as protection from the elements in a simple ballad about a woman following her lover to sea can have many ethical and moral implications not visible to the average reader.
Works Cited
Barnes, Tanya M, and Kerryn A Greive. “Topical Pine Tar: History, Properties and Use as a Treatment for Common Skin Conditions.” The Australasian Journal of Dermatology, John Wiley and Sons Inc., May 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5434829/.
“Br’er Rabbit Attacking the Tar Baby, 1895 Illustration” A.B. Frost. Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar-Baby#/media/File:Brer_Rabbit_and_the_Tar_Baby.jpg
Burns, Janet. “A Brief, Sticky History of Tarring and Feathering.” Mental Floss, 6 Aug. 2015, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66830/brief-sticky-history-tarring-and-feathering
“Heathen, adj. and n.1.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/85157.
Hornback, Robert. “The Folly of Racism: Enslaving Blackface and the ‘Natural’ Fool Tradition.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 20, 2007, pp. 46–84.
Martyris, Nina. “’Tar Baby’: A Folk Tale About Food Rights, Rooted In The Inequalities Of Slavery.” NPR, NPR, 11 May 2017, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/11/527459106/tar-baby-a-folktale-about-food-rights-roote d-in-the-inequalities-of-slavery.
Outland, Robert B. “Slavery, Work, and the Geography of the North Carolina Naval Stores Industry, 1835-1860.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 62, no. 1, 1996, pp. 27–56. JSTOR.
Poitevin, Kimberly. “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 2011, pp. 59–89.
“tar, v.1.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/197756.
Dugaw Catalogue Citations
“Susan’s Adventures in a British Man-of-War”. No. 86. Pg 762-764. “The Banks of the Nile”. No. 15. Pg 411-416.
“Young Henry of the Raging Main”. No. 35. Pg 495-498.