As many contributors to this thread have pointed out, there are definitional problems with 'right' and 'left', 'coservative', 'liberal', and 'radical'. Look through Child and you will find many ballads that reflect an aristocratic perspective; I think these might fairly be called 'conservative', but it would make no sense to try to locate them on the contemporary left-right continuum. The farmer became a villain in many English folk songs when the social situation changed; when hired farmworkers were treated like family, ate with the farmer and so on, there was little need for such songs, and when there is some reference to 'the master' it is usually favorable; once the farmer distanced himself from his employees and regarded their labor as a commodity to be had at the lowest possible price, songs changed too. Songs arising among the industrial working class reflect the situation brought about by the industrial revolution. The draft protest song is a traditional genre in eastern Europe, as is the orphan song, but are these songs of the 'left'? I don't think the category applies. Is 'Dixie' a right-wing song? I suppose it depends on context: if sung in Alabama or Mississippi during the heyday of the civil rights movement, it certainly could be seen that way, but in the 19th century context I am not sure that it would be meaningful to speak of it in those terms. John Calhoun describes the condition of industrial workers in words that might be called reminiscent of Marx if Calhoun did not antedate Marx. Reality seldom fits comfortably into simply bimodal analytical categories, and neither do folk songs.

Stephen R.