I think whats stirring in my mind Deckman, is a memory.

I seem to remember a review in Sing Out of an American Scholarly work called The Fatal Summer and it was all about the murder ballad as an identifiable genre - The Banks of the Ohio, Tom Dula, Pretty Polly.

Two lovers, a tryst, he does her in.......
In a way Willie Moore 'feels' similar in spirit to these songs - even though there isn't a murder. the same feeling of doomed youth - ruined by love. Although Barbara Ellen wouldn't fit.

The infanticide songs (Weila Weila, The Well Below the Valley, The Cruel Mother) - surely another genre.

The Lord Returns home and kicks up shit(Raggle taggle Gypsies, Matty Groves, Jack Orion, Long Lankin) - another genre again.

Its a sensual thing - I don't claim to be any kind of folklorist or really find the tradition much use in my own writing. Just something I think I've noticed.