"Why does this sentence make me drool with anticipation?"

The necrophilia?

In Frank P's version, the murder is abetted by a manservant (instead of the usual maid), who is then invited into bed by the wicked lady. He declines, using the kind of excuse more usually attributed to the talking bird who has witnessed the murder (found in most versions of the ballad), when the lady invites it to sit on her hand.

FP told Frank Warner that according to his family folklore the ballad was part of a longer story (with elements too gruesome to be included in the sung version), in which the lady had been laying traps for passing hunters in the forest, killing them and then having sex with the corpses. 'Young Henry' was merely the latest in the sequence.

Whatever 'clever specialist' might have composed 'Young Hunting' in the first place, I think it's safe to say that someone else along the line gave it a pretty radical tweak!

Incidentally the Proffitt tune strongly resembles one sung by Martin McDonagh on the 'Songs of the Irish Travellers' collection. A very similar tune cropped up in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1929 - but all the other tunes collected with Child 68 in The British Isles or North America, are completely different.

As they say in North America, Go Figure.