"I wonder, can the riddle songs carry symbolic weight without having an actual meaning as such? There's certainly a heavy clout of imagery going on here, even in Lay the bent to the bonny broom, the incantatory jouissance of which might just go beyond erotic euphemism, or even understanding, into realms of the surreal. Just a weary thought anyway..."

Trying rather incompletely to follow your thoughts here Sinister, in fact I'd be interested if you could elabortate your thinking some so I could get a better handle on what your aiming at.

But by way of tangential response, I thought that the 'surrealistic' element implied by incantatory style repetition you refer to, is rather interesting, considering how repetition itself thoroughly dismantles our meaningful recognition of familiar words and phrases, thus effectively rendering them complete gibberish. Or perhaps I'm just rephrasing your own words somewhat?