Banks of the Ohio

There is a long tradition in American Folk music of someone murdering someone else. In the songs there are typically qualifiers, or justifications as to why the murderer acted as they did. I think if we divorce the theme from the subject we can understand the stories better. From the murderer's point of view... Someone hurt me. I overreacted. Now life will never be the same again.

I am not advocating murder. Or saying the song, any of the murder ballads really, is justified. I am saying things happen in life that are hard to process. Art (songs in this instance) can help us understand our feeling, through a hyperbolic analogies.