Paul Davenport wrote: "The problem may lie with the sad fact that most people want to be 'cheerful'. What this often means is that they don't want to be made to think too hard, assuming that 'entertainment' has to be vacuous and undemanding."

Hear hear, Paul! :-) I don't understand the criticism sometimes levelled at, for example, Child ballads, that they are 'depressing' -for me they are the most exciting and powerful creations that could be imagined, containing the entire range of human experience and emotion. A friend of mine once wittily described them as 'the costume dramas of the folk song world.' Call me grumpy, but there's nothing more 'depressing' than listening to a vacuously jaunty song which doesn't really say anything. Ho hum.