Amergin, I agree with you there. Perhaps those death and dismemberment songs serve to reinforce how good things are at home? I loved those songs as a kid. Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad," along with old standards like Lord Randall, Barbry Allen, Outlandish Knight, Old Tante Koba (Marais and Miranda), and some I can't remember the names of, like the one with the two sisters, one murders the other, she washes up in the mill pond and the miller is hanged. . . lots of violence, revenge, innocent victims in those songs.

SRS