"Little Sir Hugh rubs shoulders on AR's album with a lot of other macabre ballads in which terrible things are done. The album isn't going to turn anyone into an anti-semite, any more than it will make someone burn nurses or murder their daughter's boyfriends. If anything it serves to remind us that anti-semitism is equally barbaric."

I agree with this (and with Dave's sentiments too). We should remember that a song exists only when it's sung. We can choose to sing it or not. We can choose to listen to it or not (unless it's foisted on us without warning, as Vin Garbutt once did at our folk club with his anti-abortion song, but even then we can reject it without getting horribly offended). I'm not in any way trying to champion songs which have racist intent. That goes against the limits of the kind of free speech that I recognise. I hear a lot of the ould "of their time" songs as having racist content without a hint of conscious racist intent. That isn't to say that they can't still perpetuate racist stereotypes. But I return to my point that we're grown ups. As such, I don't really appreciate another grown up policing the words for me. I'd rather contemplate the original and squirm as required. Or not contemplate it at all if singers choose to not sing it. That's all.