Hopefully avoiding the childish squabbles....

JHW..You misunderstood the characteristic here. Comment by the characters is actually one of the most important characteristics, it's comment by the narrator's voice that is deemed to be uncharacteristic, BUT even then whilst it does not exist in the earlier ballads of the 16th century it gradually crept in during the following centuries as the people became more aware of the wider world and their own place in it. The lack/presence of narrator comment is one of the parameters Child used to determine whether a ballad was old or quite recent.

Confession...this is not off the top of my head, I have just been rereading Willa Muir's excellent 'Living With Ballads'.