Morris-ey: "You however, seem to believe that one can judge the past using our more enlightened modern sensibilities. I do not."

Judge "the past"?

I think I was pretty clear about what I believed we could judge:

"We may feel we can't judge people who adhered to their community's standards--though there were always those who opposed them--but we certainly can judge those standards themselves."

And actually I think most of us do: that most of us believe people should be free and not chattle, that women should not be utterly subjugated to the oldest male in their household. That, in fact, they should receive the same opportunities and have the same rights as men.

You of course know yourself, and I do not, but I sincerely believe that if you or I or most mudcatters spent a week in, say, 1854 Charleston South Carolina, getting to know what was going on, and what rules were played by, we'd be pretty well appalled.

I think the same would hold, to a much lesser extent, of 1954 New Britain, Connecticut, about which I have some personal knowledge.

I don't think those differences are grounds for self-congratulation about contemporary enlightened sensibilities. Instead, the invisibility of systematic injustice back then to people of good will cautions me to consider what's invisible to me, and how my attitudes and actions--and inactions--might look to someone like myself in, say, two generations from now.

I apologize for going this deep and wide in a thread about traditional songs, but that's where I'm coming from with respect to the original question.