Sorry SO'P, your last posting was little more than a trip down Memory Lane to Pseuds Corner - ah, the limitations of a Secondary Modern education!!! I hope others got more out of it than I did.
If you really want to re-open an argument on the fatuous comparison of folk and modern popular music, please re-open an old thread and start a new one.
Like EKann, I find myself coming to ballads from two directions. I quite enjoy and get a great deal of pleasure from lifting the corners and looking underneath (Wimberley's Corroboree statement always works for me).
Having said that, the sheer pleasure of the story when they are well sung still makes the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.
It's worth remembering that in the tradition the ballads survived best in the mouths of non-literate Travellers, both in Ireland and Scotland, who enjoyed them as bloody good stories.
Jim Carroll