There's a kind of nostalgia that is about remembering the good things that have gone, and the kind that pretends there weren't bad things. All too often people mistake the first for the second, reading the fact that a song doesn't go on about the bad stuff as meaning that it denies they existed.

The thing is, a song about the old days and the old ways isn't a balance sheet, setting down the good and the bad and comparing them with how things are today. You sing about the good old days, and about the bad days, maybe, but not in the same songs, generally. And in both cases, they are the same old days.

That applies whether its a matter of going down the mines, being an agricultural labourer, plantation life, or surviving the war.