Steve said
"I see Lord Lovel as a burlesque of some earlier lost ballad"
and Jim responded
"Why "burlesque" and why "lost"?"

Perhaps "burlesque" isn't quite the best word, but personally I agree with Bronson's "too too insipid". I'm reminded of GUEST,Ktesibios's comment on Anachie Gordon
"At the insistence of her parents Jeannie marries Lord Saltoun and drops dead. Her sailor boyfriend comes home, hears of it and he drops dead. So now it's everybody dead and it's taken us forty-seven verses to get to such an unsatisfying conclusion." There's even less to the plot of Lord Lovel: he goes away and comes back to find that his wife has died. I would like to believe that the surviving ballad derives from an earlier version with more meat to it.

And yet Jim is absolutely right about how the ballad has endured, and (presumably) been taken seriously.

Richard