"I challenge anyone to find another song that, in just 48 short lines, deals with incest, seduction, adultery, self-mutilation, rape, torture, and murder."
"Child Owlet" was one of numerous songs that came to the attention of the California Society For The Suppression Of Vice in the late 19th Century, but was cleared, which prompted Goia to comment, "One wonders what took place in the songs seized by the authorities, if the ballads approved by the scholars broached such taboos."