But you forget that these were the very songs that so embarrassed the collectors, not just because they celebrate sex (which might have been bad enough), but because it's almost always illicit sex.

Or as it once was called, "fornication."

It seems to me that such songs, like so many others(e.g., "The Wild Colonial Boy," are more fantasy wish-fulfillment than anything else. No Pill, no penicillin, condoms difficult to obtain, highly valued virginity, family retribution: life could rarely have resembled the songs.