Irishenglish
For me the song is basically two people stating their mutual dislike of each other. Carthy has a naturally light voice and I have always thought that tonally, he has never developed it enough to to project the tension that this type of narrative demands.
(IMO) His accompaniment dominates the text anyway so that the listener's attention is drawn to the that rather than the somewhat bitter dialogue, turning the performance into a listenable but somewhat insipid musical performance.
To be fair to Carthy, he is nowhere near the only singer who adopts this approach - accompaniment has spoiled more songs than it has enhanced, simply because it doesn't - accompany, that is.
Jim Carroll.