Some of the oldest bits and pieces of folk songs still floating around today are in children's songs. People are ok with imagery that doesn't make sense, words that seem like nonsense, and stories that are beyond belief in the first place if they're in a kid's song. So let's shed a tear for Clementine, The Lady in the Woods and her baby, William, Barbara Allen, and all the Mollys. There's just one factually based song in the show today, and it's John Henry. Historians have been able to put together that he was a formerly enslaved African-American man who was conscripted for labor from a prison. When he beat the drilling machine, it wasn't about the machine, it was about the fact that none of the white workers could do it. Earlier versions of the song within the community make that very apparent.