I grew up in the 1980s but in many ways it was more like the 1880s. We lived with my grandmother on the Northumbrian coast and the routine of our days echoed the routines of her youth, perhaps her mother’s and grandmother’s, too. We were like an elephant family in an African game park, following our matriarch around ancient migratory routes, oblivious to the rise and fall of regimes outside.

Lunch (no elbows on the table), a walk to the sea, sherry time (Amontillado dry); then my grandmother and my clever younger brother would play Piquet while the children of lesser focus played with the open fire. And we sang around the piano, my grandmother playing, folk songs and ballads from the north-east: ‘Barbara Allen’; ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy’, ‘The North Country Maid’, ‘The Golden Vanity’.

Suddenly everyone’s come over all screen-sick and they want their kids fossicking around in fires

Recently, this sort of Victorian style of childhood has become almost fashionable again. Suddenly everyone’s come over all screen-sick, and they want their kids playing card games and fossicking around in fires. But what no one’s thought of yet is how bracing it would be for our children if we brought back the old songs. I don’t mean just that singing releases endorphins or that Von Trapp-style singalongs make for family harmony. I mean that endlessly repeating those strange, brutal, mournful stories is actually handy for children. If we could just find a way of tipping the old songs into the minds of future generations, they might turn out more robust.

It’s been at least 45 years now that I’ve been thinking about ‘Barbara Allen’. Just the first four notes of her tune (1, 3, 4, 5, on any major scale) summons her like a spell. The ballad of ‘Barbara Allen’ has been around since Tudor times. It’s ballad number 84 in the collection made by the great 19th-century American folklorist Francis ‘Stubby’ Child. And the basic story goes like this: a young man in a place usually called Scarlet town falls in love with a local woman, Barbara. In the version we sang, the young man was Jimmy Grey but that’s probably because every man within a 50-mile radius seemed to be called Jimmy Grey. Barbara spurns Jimmy who falls deathly ill as a result. Barbara goes to see Jimmy on his deathbed. ‘And slowly, slowly she came up,/ And slowly she stood by him’ (Jimmy feels a pang of hope) ‘but all she said when she drew nigh:/ “Young man, I think you’re dying.”’

In my memory, I’m sitting on the piano stool beside my wonderful grandmother. She has a sort of silk kerchief around her neck, fixed with a brooch, and she delivers Barbara’s killer line with style: ‘Young man, I think you’re dying.’ After Jimmy dies, Barbara takes to her own bed and then dies too, and I wasn’t sorry to see her go. It was only years later that I understood Barbara was to be pitied too. She knew she’d screwed up. She’d passed up a good man who loved her and that’s a hard thing to find, as the saying goes.

‘Barbara Allen’ is considered the world’s most-collected English language folk ballad. It’s spread throughout the English-speaking world, perhaps because what ‘Barbara Allen’ teaches is cold, useful truths: some men just go for psycho women, for instance, but also, more generally, that you can screw up. Some decisions can’t be undone.

Isn’t this the exact opposite of all the soothing goop children today inhale and have done since Disney turned to the dark side? Everything is possible, kids! All mistakes are reversible. All you need is a little help from your friends. Just dare to dream, and that dream will happen. True love never dies.

It sure does in the old songs. ‘Clementine’ fell into the foaming brine. That noble lord’s wife scarpers for good with ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsy’ (Child, number 200):

What do I care for a goose-feather bed,

With blankets drawn so comely, O?

Tonight I’ll lie in a wide open field,

In the arms of me raggle-taggle gypsy, O.

It was an education. As was another family favourite, ‘Oh No, John!’, versions of which appear in the early 1600s. A woman, whose father has bid her always reply ‘no’ to suitors, is pursued by a persistent lover. ‘Oh no, John, no,’ she tells him at the end of every verse.

Eventually he asks:

Oh Madam since you are so cruel,

And that you do scorn me so,

If I may not be your husband?

Madam will you let me go?

She replies: ‘Oh no, John! No, John! No!’ No meaning yes, rejection as a come-on. I think of that song every time I see one of those posters reminding boys they need written approval before they make a move. Enthusiastic, informed consent? Oh no, John, no!

After a quick diversion via a song about a couple of alcoholics who enjoy drinking gin and rum from a little brown jug, my grandmother, my mum and perhaps a few aunts liked to round things off with a ballad we called ‘The Golden Vanity’, but which is known in some regions as ‘The Sweet Trinity’, ‘The Golden Willow Tree’ or ‘The Turkish Revelry’. I’ve tried to sing this to my son, to pass on the traditions I grew up immersed in, but the story runs so counter to Paw Patrol that he can’t even stand to listen. It goes like this: a desperate captain, under attack from the Spanish, promises his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who can sink the Spanish boat. A cabin boy leaps overboard with his auger and sticks a hole in the enemy ship’s hull, but the captain reneges on his promise and the boy’s only reward is drowning. ‘I’m drifting with the tide,’ cries the boy, and dies. All this not in a minor key but in G major, with the jaunty ring of a shanty.

Bad things happen at sea. Greedy, rich men will revert to type once the danger’s passed. You need to know, girls and boys.