"Does "entertainment" exclude thought - I'm sure Shakespeare and Beethoven thought not!!"

Wassailing songs, work songs, lullabies, sea shanties, drinking songs, broadsides, bawdy songs, comedy songs? Dunno if they were supposed to make people think! Maybe that was true of the long ballads, but I'm more inclined to see them as ripping yarns... I'm not opposed to thinking (I tried it once or twice and quite enjoyed it), but I don't really associate it with folk music... obviously people think a lot about folk music, but I suspect you can't whistle a Mudcat thread about Ewan McColl in the shower.

Or can you?