Mostly I agree with your aspersions on Bartlett, but I do not think that LBV is a protest song or even a song about the injustices of the law. It's a song about loyalty and infidelity; the narrator will cheat on his best friend friend but not betray him to public shame, or perhaps it's his lover the best friend's wife who whom he will not betray, while she, in turn, will not speak to save her lover's life even as he remains silent to save her honor, or perhaps that of his best friend her husband, though she mourns her lover, wearing a LBV, and cries over his grave when the cold wind moans. Nothing in the song challenges the law or suggests an injustice rather than a tragedy. The law is simply the neutral instrument of the tragedy. The song is not a folk song, btw, in the sense that it was composed out of the oral tradition the way Pretty Polly or Love Henry was, but is clearly artfully commercial composed; I believe it is early country, though I don't know the author.
jks
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