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So: why did this 17th century woodcut depict two women in bed together? (Thread)
That image comes from the 1869 edition of Roxburghe Ballads, where the editor - William Chappell (Chappell's music dynasty) - transcribed a massive collection of ballads, cut them about and swapped the woodcuts. He put this one with 'The Scotch Lad's Moan'
but it originally came from West Country Jigg. It also appears in several other ballads - woodcuts were mobile images - including The Bloody Battle at Billingsgate https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/21951/image, & Three Female Ramblers https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30641/image.
Hats off to EBBA's amazing search tools https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ . The original image is v poor (EBBA codes it as m/f) but Chappell not only chose to redraw it in 1879 but to describe it as 'two girls in bed'.
Now this may say more about Victorian ballad interests than 17th century images but as Valerie Traub & others have shown us - the eyes of early modern readers would have seen in it
girls sharing beds conveniently; other ballads where maids longed for 'a dil-doul'; erotic stories with lesbian sex; female husbands & crossdressers; 'other' women doing strange deeds in Egypt/ Morocco; and many other tales.
More research to do - and great new tools to do it with.
thanks to @EBBA_Ballads !