"Honest and disparaging are not mutually exclusive, Jim"
You have the answer in the songs Dave
They ane made anodyne by their performance,
Don't know if you remember the old Classic Comics - Hamlet, MacBeth, Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities - all in comic strip format
They had their place in my life until I managed to get my head around the real thing
Same with the music
"I would far prefer a folk club that entertains me to one that educates me."
Do you really believe the two are exclusive from one another - can't you learn and be entertained at the same time?
You have my deepest sympathy.
I find that the more I find out about the song, the more I enjoy it
I thoroughly enjoyed the months I spent annotating our songs for the Clare Library website
A couple of examples below
Education and enjoyment as far as I'm concerned
Jim Carroll

Banks of the Nile (Roud 950 Laws N9) Pat MacNamara
The theme of this song ? a woman asking her soldier or sailor lover to be allowed ro accompany him to battle or to sea, is not so unbelievable as it might first appear.
Armies once trudged their way around the world accompanied by ?camp-followers?, mobile settlements of women, children and tradesmen all running risks not too different of those taken by active soldiers.
Following the defeat of the rebels at Vinegar Hill in 1798, British troops rounded up and massacres the camp-followers who has assisted the rebels during the fighting.
Camp following lasted into the nineteenth century and continued to be a common part of army life into the 19th century.
The same went for seamen; in 1822 an anonymous pamphlet suggested that members of the Royal Navy were taking as many as two women apiece aboard the ships. These women also proved useful in that they fought alongside their lovers at the Nile and Trafalgar during the Napoleonic wars.
The well-known saying ?show a leg? is said to have originated from the practice of officers in the Royal Navy clearing the crew from their hammocks and bunks by demanding that the occupant sticks their leg out to show whether they were male or female.
?Banks of the Nile? is probably the best known song of women accompanying their lovers into battle or on board ship.
Though this version refers to the practice happening among the Irish military forces, the song is just as popular in England and probably originated there

Farmer Michael Hayes (Roud 5226) John Lyons
John Lyons spoke before singing the song:
This song, I got the tune of it years ago, from Willie Clancy and I had the words all the time collected from an old scrapbook I had, but I didn?t actually hear the tune until later. The song was Farmer Michael Hayes. It?s a song about a true incident about a tenant farmer who killed his landlord in a Tipperary hotel when he was evicted, and he went on the run and he finally escaped to America where, I believe, he was never caught.
As a young man, Tom Lenihan heard the ballad of Farmer Michael Hayes sung by his father and by local ballad seller, Bully Nevin, but never knew more than a few verses. In 1972 he obtained a full text, adapted it to what he already knew and put it to a variation of the tune he had heard. We believe it to be one of the best narrative Irish ballads we have ever come across; Tom makes a magnificent job of it.
The story, based on real events, tells of how a farmer/land agent with a reputation for harshness is evicted from his land and takes his revenge on the landlord, in some cases by shooting him, and in Tom?s version by also killing off the landlord's livestock.
He takes off in an epic flight, closely followed by police with hounds and is chased around the coast of Ireland as far as Mayo where he finally escapes to America. We worked out once that the reported chase is over five hundred miles of rough ground. Tradition has it that he eventually returned home to die in Ireland.
As Georges Zimmerman points out, this ballad shows how a probably hateful character could become a gallant hero in the eyes of the oppressed peasants.
It is a rare song in the tradition, but we know it was sung in Kerry in the 1930s; Caherciveen Traveller Mikeen McCarthy gave us just line of it:

?I am a bold ?indaunted? fox that never was before on tramp?
My rents, rates and taxes I was willing for to pay.

When he heard it sung in full in a London folk club he said, ?That?s just how my father sang it?.
Ref;
Songs of Irish Rebellion; Georges-Denis Zimmermann 1967

Lady in Her Father's Garden - Peggy McMahon undated
See also: Lady in Her Father's Garden ? Tom Lenihan Recorded at singer?s home, July 1980
This is probably one of the most popular of all the 'broken token? songs, in which parting lovers are said to break a ring in two, each half being kept by the man and woman. At their reunion, the man produces his half as a proof of his identity.
Robert Chambers, in his Book of Days, 1862-1864, describes a betrothal custom using a 'gimmal' or linked ring:
'Made with a double and sometimes with a triple link, which turned upon a pivot, it could shut up into one solid ring... It was customary to break these rings asunder at the betrothal which was ratified in a solemn manner over the Holy Bible, and sometimes in the presence of a witness, when the man and woman broke away the upper and lower rings from the central one, which the witness retained. When the marriage con?tract was fulfilled at the altar, the three portions of the ring were again united, and the ring used in the ceremony'.

                            Illustration            

The custom of exchanging rings as a promise of fidelity lasted well into the nineteenth century in Britain and was part of the plot of Thomas Hardy?s ?Far From The Madding Crowd?.
These 'Broken Token' songs often end with the woman flinging herself into the returned lov?er's arms and welcoming him back
Tipperary Travelling woman, Mary Delaney who also sang it for us, knew it differently and had the suitor even more firmly rejected:

"For it's seven years brings an alteration,
And seven more brings a big change to me,
Oh, go home young man, choose another sweetheart,
Your serving maid I'm not here to be."

Ref: The Book of Days, Robert Chambers, W & R Chambers, 1863-64.
Other CDs: Sarah Anne O'Neill - Topic TSCD660; Daisy Chapman - MTCD 308; Maggie Murphy - Veteran VT134CD.