Where is the characterisation ?
Beyond falling in love - where is there any indication of what they are
All lovers in folk songs sing about how that love goiives rise to other problems - parental disaproval, ssocial misalliance, parting, poverty.....

I was twenty-four years old
When I met the woman I would call my own

He was 24 when they met.

Twenty-two grand kids now growing old
In that house that your brother bought ya

They now have 22 grand kids and live in the house her brother bought her.

And I asked her father, but her daddy said, "No
You can't marry my daughter"

Her Father was against the marriage as he was a Protestant from Belfast and she was a Catholic from Wexford.

That is just in the first verse. He goes to to give us their names, where they were both from, the work they both did, the fact that they married in borrowed clothes, how many children they had and that they are still together after 60 years.

Just how much characterisation do you want?

There is no such characterisation in, for instance, Dirty Old Town. As to the tune, it has for more in common with the Star of the County Down than Dirty Old Town has with The Waters of Tyne.

One think you do have right. We are comparing chalk and cheese but I know which is closer to the tradition.

Why don't you just say that you do not like the song Nancy Mulligan and have done with it? It would make far more sense than the arguments you have put up against it so far.