There were plenty of "happily ever after" songs, just as there were songs about sex and violence; the latter, however, tend to carry a deeper resonance and were certainly of more interest to, first, antiquarians and, later, song collectors and folklorists, though not always to the traditional singers!  The preoccupations of our ancestors were not so very different from our own, though.  "Long Lankin" was, or became, a bogey man used to frighten children, and ballads like The Outlandish Knight and George Collins turn up in song and story all over Europe (see, for example,  The Outlandish Knight [notes],  and  George Collins [notes].)

Anybody interested in all this should read Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads; even more than a century on, there is no more comprehensive study of the narrative ballads.

Malcolm