Except those times when they'll straight up kill you, as is the case in this week's Dead Lovers Ballad, "The Cruel Sister," (Roud 8, Child 10) also known as "The Twa Sisters," "The Bonny Swans" and a bunch of other names.
In this version of the song there are two sisters who live in some remote home by the North Sea. They're visited by a knight who comes a-courting, paying attention to both sisters, but clearly favoring the younger. The older sister, unable to bear the idea that her younger sibling might be married off before she is, tosses the girl into the ocean to drown.
That's when things get weird.
The younger sister's corpse washes up on a beach somewhere and is found by some wandering minstrels. Instead of running off to the authorities to report the a dead body or even just giving the girl a decent burial, they cut up her corpse and make a harp out of it, and string it with her hair (in some versions they use finger bones as tuning pegs or other gruesome details). They take this bone-harp to the wedding of the older sister (who, after offing her competition apparently gets that knight to propose pretty quick) where it suddenly begins to play itself, and somehow tells the story of how the bride murdered her younger sister. In this version that's where it all ends, though some versions tell of how the murderess is executed (pulled apart by a mill wheel, hanged, etc.).
This is an old ballad, dating back to at least the mid-1600s, but with connections not only to other musical renditions, but to many prose stories as well and in several languages. In the musical versions, the siblings are often sisters, but in the story versions, they may be brothers as well. Many versions describe the dead girl as floating "like a swan" in some way, or tie swans into the imagery of the story somehow, In the well-known Loreena McKennitt version, the swan imagery is repeated in between the lines of narration, while the version I played (which is a fairly modern take based on a version from Old Blind Dogs, which is based on a version from Pentangle) uses "Lay the bent to the bonny broom" which originally comes from another, even older song, "Riddles Wisely Expounded," (Child Ballad Number 1! Roud 161) which also lent elements to a popular folk ballad which was famously recorded by Simon and Garfunkel as"Scarborough Fair." There is some debate as to what laying the bent to the bonny broom actually means, but it seems to be some sort of good-luck incantation, or ward against evil (or it may just be a fancy way of saying "go lay yourselves down in the long grass and get it on," a distinct possibility in any song, folk, pop or other). This form of refrain, a repeating line that has little or nothing to do with the narration of the song's story is referred to as a "burden," which derives from the French bordoun, or drone, as these lines add a kind of repetitive accompaniment to the lines of exposition.
The idea of an older sister being bitterly jealous of a younger sibling marrying before her is not that far-fetched, after all, even many close siblings suffer from jealousy and resentment on occasion, and it's still considered a bit socially awkward, in some circles at least, to be an older, unmarried sibling while your younger brothers or sisters are happily married off. Add to this the dim prospects in some historical time periods for unwed women (or women in general, but slightly less so for those with a well-to-do husband) and the remote location of the family's holdings making potential suitors few and far between, and you've got a recipe for a good old-fashioned murder ballad.
Now, about the creepy minstrels. While there is some lore associating musicians and bards with pre-christian religion and all sorts of druidic tradition, I think this falls more into the camp of "grateful dead" folklore. "Grateful Dead" stories are classified in the Aarne-Thompson index (the folk tale equivalent of the Roud and Child indices) as tales about a ghost with unfinished business who somehow rewards a living person who helps them resolve that business (and yes, that's where the band The Grateful Dead got its name). The minstrels in this case are acting as agents of the dead girl and bringing her sister to justice. I'm not sure what, exactly, the musicians get out of this, although maybe they get to keep the harp. A harp made out of bones is probably pretty cool. I don't think it would sound very good, but it'd look impressive anyway.
Now I kind of want one.
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