While perhaps sensible advice not to trust a whore, this ballad does not clearly distinguish that this was a woman paid for sex, so we return to the idea of "whore of the mouth." Indeed, it is the man who ends up in trouble with creditors at the end, in debt for this woman, rather than she being in trouble with the law. Of particular interest is the verse:
For if you still will follow whores,
they will devoure you all:
Your quoine, your states, your health and friends,
Then turne you out of doore
"Devoure" conjures up ideas of the devouring womb, vagina dentata imagery which we have been concerned with this semester. For all that they lacked agency in society, men had a lot of fear of the power of women. The mysteries of the feminine body, which occupied that odd limbo where they could potentially transform at any time (from maid to woman to mother to crone, or even to man in the case of hermaphrodites), were not accessible for men, who stayed fairly static throughout life after puberty.
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