Songs often provide a sort of minimalist framework, to which listeners have added various additional elements to fill out the story, Nothing wrong with that, its how we make sense of a song we sing or hear.

Sometimes the story that gets built up around a song can be one that come up with is one that they find disturbing or offensive, sometimes the reverse.

But very often when you look at the actual words, that story isn't actually in there. Old Black Joe is a case in point. So are any other number of songs, such as Danny Boy notoriously.