Going back to one of Joe Offer's posts, I understand that the early settlers included several Protestant groups with different attitudes. I grew up a Congregationalist in the UK, and I gathered that their lot were less rigid than some others (but they would teach that, wouldn't they?). Then I became a Quaker - different again, and some executed by Puritans in Boston? I would expect that the attitude to traditional themes would vary between groups and within them. Would some of them not have abjured singing ballads completely?

Penny