But it is, of course, an old tradition: old Bill Shakespeare was not averse to a spot of cross-dressing: Twelfth Night, As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice, in all of them females take on the roles of men. And this seems to be a tradition with some roots in the truth: Grace O'Malley (Gráinne Ní Mháille (c. 1530 ­ c. 1603, also known as Granuaile or Gráinne Mhaol) was an Irish woman pirate; Joan of Arc was a 15th century French peasant girl who fought against the English forces during the latter part of the Hundred Years' War. She was captured by the English and was burned at the stake after being convicted by a religious court; the act of dressing in male clothing was one of the principal reasons for her execution.Anne Bonny and Mary Read were late 17th century English pirates. Ulrika Eleonora Stålhammar was a Swedish woman who served as a soldier during the Great Northern War and married a woman. Ann Mills fought as a dragoon in the British army in 1740, and in more recent times Dorothy Lawrence, who died in 1964, was an English reporter who secretly posed as a man to become a soldier during the First World War.

Here's just a few of the traditional songs relating to cross-dressing:

The Female Cabin Boy

The Handsome Cabin Boy

The Female Drummer

William Taylor

The Famous Flower Of Serving Men

Sovay

Canadee-i-o

Look up any of the above titles and you will be led into yet another of the fascinating alleyways that thread the world of folksong.