March--Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind/Wagoner's Lad

Oh, hard is the fortune
Of all womankind.
She's always controlled,
She's always confined.
Controlled by her parents,
Until she's a wife,
A slave to her husband,
The rest of her life.


I found this poem in a novel, page 61 in The Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer, that I had been reading. It is part of a folksong, although there are a few different ballads that use it in their first stanza.
The Wagoner's Lad:
Wagoner's Lad
Oh, hard is the fortune of all womankind
She's always controlled; she's always confined,
Controlled by her parents until she's a wife,
A slave to her husband the rest of her life.

Well, I'm just a poor girl and my fortune is sad.
I've always been courted by the wagoner's lad.
He's courted me daily, by night and by day
And now he is loading and going away.

My parents don't like him because he is poor.
They say he's not worthy of entering my door.
He works for a living; his money's his own
And if they don't like him, they can leave him alone.

"Your horses are hungry; I'll feed them some hay.
Then sit down here by me as long as you may."
"My horses aren't hungry; they won't eat your hay,
So fare ye well, darling; I'll be on my way."

Oh, hard is the fortune of all womankind
She's always controlled; she's always confined,
Controlled by her parents until she's a wife,
A slave to her husband the rest of her life.


Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind:
Oh, hard is the fortune of all womankind,
We're always controlled and we're always confined,
And when we get married to end all our strife,
We're slaves to our husbands for the rest of our lives.

All young girls, take warning, take warning from me,
Never place your affections on a young man so free,
They will hug you and kiss you and tell you more lies,
Than the cross-ties on the railroad or the stars in the sky.

Of meeting is a pleasure and parting is a grief,
And a false-hearted lover is worse than a thief,
For a thief will just rob you and take what you have,
But a false-hearted lover will make you his slave.

He'll call you his darling, he'll call you his pearl,
And go behind you with some other girl;
You'll cook just to please him and scrub all his floors,
And if you won't love him, he'll call you a whore.

This poem expresses how I sometimes feel when I am in a more cynical mood. Save for the rhyming of the last word in lines 6 and 8, it has no apparent structure. In the book, it was sung by a rebellious girl during the French Revolution who was forced by the British Royal Navy to attend finishing school in Boston. It is for March because that is the month leading right up to the Nationals when I have to work the hardest and practice a lot of squash and do a lot of fitness training. It is probably my worst and busiest month of the year when I feel the most depressed and pessimistic.