Actually, the ballads (so far) do affect me - though mainly on first learning. The Great Selkie can still catch me, especially when singing it while in the bath and imagining myself as the young woman standing upon this far flung rock at Sule Skerry while she's contemplating diving into the waves crashing about her.. "I'll drown myself at Sule Skerry"

But such mythic images and archetypal fairytale scenes seem to cut more deeply for me, than more mundane tales.

The bit where King Orfeo persues his bride and waits for seven years in the green wood to become overgrown with it, keeps catching me out..

Blubbing proper? I don't know that anything has reduced me to inconsolable sobbing of late.