There are several ballads where the young sailor betrays his true love and kills her; her ghost follows the ship out to sea and rips him up into teeny, weeny pieces, and good riddance.

Willy/William Taylor, where the abandoned lover dresses as a sailor and follows her "true" love to sea; on finding that he's married another, she shoots him and his bride and is made captain of the ship for her forthrightness and valor...

Long Lankin/Beau Lamkin mentioned above is wonderfully bloodthirsty (Plot synopsis:Lord refuses to pay his stone mason, who creeps into his house and murders his wife and son in revenge...); Child Owlet is just gruesome (Plot synopsis:Child Owlet refuses to sleep with his lord's wife, so she cuts herself and accuses him of rape just to watch him burn/hang)

East Texas Red is a Woody Guthrie song about a railroad bull (cop) who kicks over a hobo's bucket of stew out of sheer meanness, and gets what's coming to him a year later.