This is the kind of stuff that makes the Mudcat great in even the worst of its times. Thanks for an eminently readable discussion, gang!

My first impulse was to say it was the wicked wife as seductress, but the complex of individual decisions made in context is not conducive to condemning one person as the baddy. Because real life often doesn't fall in to black and white roles. It is true that any of the players could have chosen more wisely and thus prevented the convergent of bad choices into a catastrophe. The song engenders a wish -- maybe even a decision -- to seek wiser powers of choice. But is not a moralityplay in the old black-and-white sense.

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