I know it's slightly off-topic, but I'm increasingly fascinated by the use of traditional ballads in modern fiction.

Ellis Peters has a wonderful murder mystery set at a folk seminar, titled BLACK IS THE COLOR OF MY TRUE LOVE'S HEART and echoing the plot of Gil Morris/Childe Maurice.

Also in mysteries, there's the Appalachian Ballad series, so far comprised of IF EVER I RETURN, PRETTY PEGGY-O; THE HANGMAN'S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER; SHE WALKS THESE HILLS; and THE ROSEWOOD CASKET. They're set in the modern era, in a small town in the Appalachians, with a reluctant sheriff, trailer trash, ghosts, corporate pollution, a wisewoman, a lethal flood, a Vietnam veteran, a missing child...Unlike the author's other work, these are serious novels, deeply human and moving.

"Thomas the Rhymer" is popular enough I can't think of all the spinoffs, but Ellen Kushner has a nice down-to-earth one by the same title.

"Tam Lin" is also common. My favorite is by Pamela Dean, whose novel by that title is mostly a memoir of her days at Cornell, but with increasingly ominous overtones of the Tam Lin story and a dangerous elf-queen in the Classics Department. Hilarious and touching.

My favorite for obscurity, though, is Greer Ilene Gilman's MOONWISE, which along with other ballad echoes uses tropes from the tale of the wife who couldn't give birth and the wax babe her husband made to startle her mother into revealing the evil spells she'd cast.

Anyone else have favorites?