Is there is a technical difference between a dirge and a song that is merely sad? I like Vacant Chair, which IIRC is a southern US civil war tune, but I don't consider it a dirge. I suppose it might depend on how slow one sings it.

I don't think Scarborough Settler's Lament qualifies as a dirge, although it is a sad immigrant's song. It was allegedly written by A. "Sandy" Glendenning in about 1840 and it is to the tune of the Scottish tune O' A' The Airts The Wind Can Blaw, which is itself apparently based on an earlier strathspey. There is a version of the lyrics in the database but they are unfortunately corrupt. I think I might have posted a correction to them some time ago, but maybe not. I have always had a hunch, based only on my personal prejudices, that the song was originally in a much broader Scots and was watered down over the years as the descendants of the original settlers stopped speaking that language. I'll agree though, that Stan Rogers's version is the best one recorded.

Most of the songs in the Unfortunate Rake family might qualify as dirges though.

I have several CD's of Scots gaelic singing from Cape Breton Island, Natalie's home island, and although I can't understand a word of gaelic many of them sound mighty depressing to me. The English translation of the lyrics tend to bear this out.

Leonard Cohen, I think, was born with a dirge in his heart. I recognize his talent but he is too much even for my melancholy disposition. Perhaps some Prozac or St. John's Wort might help him, poor man. A collection should be taken up to offer him 100,000 dollars to write a song in jig or reel time, or a CD of Christmas classics.:)

It is remarkable though that some folk tunes that related the worse tales of woe and misery are often to a quite upbeat tune, with a derry down or fiddle de dee chorus.