MacColl used to tell the story of having to learn the ballad' Edom of Gordon' for a series of Poetry and Song albums.
It was a ballad he said had never attracted him "about wealthy noble families mindlessly slaughtering each other - who on earth could you possibly identify with?"
He re-read it through many dozens of times and finally, shortly before he was due to record it, he focused on the verses where the Douglas family, having been cornered in the burning castle, bundled the youngest daughter in sheets and dropped her over the wall, hoping she'd escape the flames - the assailant, Gordon, 'caught her on is spear'.

"And Gordon turned her ower and ower and oh, her face was wan,
He said, "You are the first that e'er I wished alive again".
And oh he turned her ower and ower, and oh, her face was white.
"I might have spared that bonny face to be some man's delight.""

MacColl said, "The waste, the ****** waste of human life, that's what those songs should be about."
Still works for me.
Jim Carroll