Okay, without condoning any of the violence in 'The Wife Wrapped in Wether skin' I think it needs putting in context. First of all we know the ballad is quite old, at least as old as 1800, probably a lot earlier.
The story is built around the clever idea that he is not allowed to beat his wife for she is of a higher class, but he can beat a sheepskin to soften it. The wife is very lazy and won't do any work around the house that a normal wife of that period would have been expected to do, so he puts the sheepskin on her back and beats that, so that when she rushes off to complain to her rich relatives he can say he was only beating his sheepskin and the wife was holding it for him. Yes, I know, very weak, but you had to be there. Oh, and in the longer versions it does the trick.