Good angle. It's interesting, though, that the 'lament' part of those songs is in inverted commas, as it were -

"And as I passed by him where he lay a-bleeding
I barely had time for to bid him adieu
...was what I said to her, but of course it was all made up

Come to think of it, given the "I overheard X and Y talking" framing device that you sometimes see, some of them are in two sets of inverted commas -

I heard someone say "I know I said 'I saw Willie Smith dying and I was very sad," but actually I am Willie Smith, and here is the ring that was broken between us".

Quite tricksy really - you'd think that anything that convoluted would have grown out of earlier, simpler songs that just said

I saw Willie Smith dying and I'm very sad

But there don't seem to be many of those, except where Willie's a poacher.