ABSTRACT
This chapter explains an analysis of the narratives to be found in 50 country and western songs from the 1920s to the present day. It involves an examination of the constructions of their storyworlds, in particular the attributions of mental states to the minds of the characters, to see how these narratives developed over time. The chapter also focus on the first two of the six groups that make up the corpus: six traditional ballads of British and Irish origin that are still sung within the American country music scene and eight ballads of American origin, most of which arose out of actual events in American history. Fictional narrative is, in essence, the presentation of mental functioning. As the philosopher John Searle explains, 'Whenever one perceive anything or think about anything, one always do it under some aspects and not others', and this is equally true of fictional characters. Like real people, characters experience the same events in different ways.
