There is a wonderful Greek traditional song (my guess is it's about 300 yrs old), which falls right into this category. I have it in my "future projects" to do an English-style ballad with it in translation, but haven't felt "ready" to have a crack at it yet.

It's called "Song of Constantine", and the story in the balled goes roughly as follows:

Constantine is the youngest of a widow's 9 sons; there is a young sister too, the apple of her mother's eye, who falls in love with a "foreigner" and wants to marry and go to "distant lands". Mother is against it, because she doen't want her daughter to go so far, and "what would happen if I am on my deathbed and cannot see her to say farewell". Constantine promises that he will go and fetch his sister, when the time comes. The sister marries and leaves.

Plague falls on the land. All 9 sons die from it, and the mother, herself on he deathbed, curses (dead) Constantine for having promised something that he now cannot deliver. A mother's curse being the strongest possible, it breaks Constantine's tombstone and he rises from the grave with his steed. Both look ghostly white, and kind of unwell, unsurprisingly.

Constantine rides to his sister's house to fetch her. She is puzzled by his looks, but he brushes he comments off with excuses (tired etc). She rides home with him, and on the way various animals, speaking with human voices (as is their wont) comment on this beautiful maiden riding with this corpse. Constantine keeps making excuses to his sister.

They make it to their mother's front door, where Constantine, having delivered on his promise, turns to dust with his steed, and his sister just makes it in time to say good bye to her dying mother.

The story is straightforward enough, then (!). My problem with this is that in the original Greek there is some very strong imagery and wonderfully inventive use of language, and I want to somehow transfer that to the translation. Worth noting that this song has contributed no less than three commonly used proverbs/sayings to the contemporary Greek language. It's a bit of a Holy Grail therefore, and I won't touch it unless I feel confident I can do it justice.