I (inadvertently) started this one, saying on another thread that I'd found it hard to learn either the Bonny Hind or Sheath and Knife because I couldn't get through them for crying. It's often said that folk songs are all about death, but the deaths in those two songs are particularly vivid for some reason - I think the incommunicability of the man's grief may be what does it.

Like others, I've filled up (in the privacy of my own home) midway through Dancing at Whitsun; there's a real relentlessness to that song, the message is really hammered home. (By contrast, The Band Played... has never done it for me.) Peter Bellamy's Poor Fellows is another song I have this kind of trouble with.

The song that really sets me off, though, is Nick Drake's Place to be. After a friend died, a few years ago, I listened to Pink Moon several times in a row; even now, just thinking of that song in particular chokes me up.

When I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see you when day was done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh so weak in this need for you

A few months later an act at Chorlton FC sprang it on me; I cried like a baby.