The recent spate of movies involving rogue cops (Cop Land, for example) and starring gangsta rappers (Ice Cube and Tupak Shakur, for example) has left me rather cold, but at the same time questioning a conclusion I reached when gangsta rap first emerged. How despicable, I had thought, to glorify through song (or what passes for song these days) the act of killing those who seek to enforce the law. The movies, however, cast the harshness of gangsta rap in a different light for me. Killing cops for the fun of it remains a loathsome goal, and glorifying cop killing also has no place in an orderly society. However, how should we react when corrupt cops threaten not only our persons but our orderly society itself? This, it would appear, emerges as the message from the combination of any number of "bad cop" movies and gangsta rap. We should not, however, overlook the inescapable fact that society has wrestled with this question for as many years as the metaphor of "new wine into old bottles" has been trite.

One of my students introduced me to a lovely, dynamic CD by Loreena McKennitt entitled "The Book of Secrets," which contains her song version of Noyes’ old chestnut, "The Highwayman." (My friend and colleague, Paul Joseph, also mentioned Phil Ochs’ version of Noyes’ poem.) As you might recall, that paragon of English criminality, the Highwayman, ultimately met his death, shot "down like a dog on the highway" by the king’s soldiers who bore the charge of keeping the peace on the king’s highway. Let’s not forget that highwaymen made their living by robbing (and occasionally killing) travelers on the highway at gunpoint, swordpoint, and knifepoint. However, we feel great sympathy for Noyes’ Highwayman in some part because he met his death because he loved too well. In larger part, we feel sympathy because the soldiers themselves have proved thoroughly repulsive. Seizing the Highwayman’s lover (Bess, the landlord’s daughter), "They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;/ They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!/ ‘Now keep good watch!’ and they kissed her." These coarse, unworthy, but duly authorized representatives of King Charles disgust us – we cheer for the Highwayman and want him to escape their vile clutches. Yet our hopes meet the same fate as Bess and the Highwayman. As the Highwayman approaches the inn, Bess manages to touch the trigger of the musket and kills herself to warn him of the trap. He runs from the inn, but on discovering her death, returns for revenge and meets his own fate instead.

Noyes forms only one link in a lengthy chain of poems, ballads, and folk tales condemning corrupt authority and praising outlaws. Need we mention Robin Hood? Martha Duncan, in the conclusion to her remarkable study, Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons, states that we "use criminals and prisons to exalt our lives, to comfort ourselves in the face of our finitude, to defend against despair." Other scholars have suggested that ballads form an integral part of the voice of rebellion against oppressive and brutal authority. Those condemned to life in the ghetto, those who must show their hotel keys to authorities because they fit a "profile" of a prostitute, those who cannot drive the highway without law enforcement officers stopping them simply because of the color of their skin – all know the negative face of the law. When faced with corrupt cops, cops who oppress rather than protect, cultures throughout history have naturally reacted by supporting the rebel.