'John Barleycorn' tells a story but because it is clearly a fictitious analogy it doesn't feel like a ballad any more than (for me) Marrowbones or Molecatcher. Perhaps the story has to feel as though it did once happen? But then there's my favourite Tamlane.

The world of John Barleycorn is very different to Tamlane; one is, as you say, a fictitious analogy; a personification of the agricultural year with respect to a quasi-religious morphology which many might assume to be somehow archetypal, and might well be! As a contributor to the John Barleycorn Reborn CD (volume two in the offing!) I'm aware just how broad opinions are on this one. John Barleycorn - archetypal pagan hymn or parody of Church orthodoxy? Anyway, it is certainly not a ballad.

Tamlane is a ballad, and like many ballads it deals in the supernatural, as oppose to the allegorical, though I dare say there are any amount of allegorical readings of it. As for the element of believability, in the world of supernatural narrative, we do believe, simply because such things continue to scare us, for whatever reason. Traditional tales of the supernatural are told not as allegory, but as truth; ghost stories, first hand accounts, and related Forteana all exist with quite vivid immediacy to which we're never quite immune, which is why such films as The Sixth Sense give us such significant pause for thought.

I like to think of myself as a materialist; however, I do allow that there are more things in heaven & earth, and that supernatural ballads such as Tamlane are effective because of our capacity to take such things quite literally - especially now that the nights are drawing in, and summer, such as it was, is officially over...