Fantasy
Old songs do a lot of heavy lifting in fantasy.
A half-remembered ballad can tell you more about a kingdom than a page of invented history. Who is blamed, who is mourned, what gets turned into a rhyme because it was easier to sing than say plainly. The official version is usually tidy. The song is where the mess leaks through.
That feels truer to how stories survive anyway. People keep the bits that fit in the mouth.
A half-remembered ballad can tell you more about a kingdom than a page of invented history. Who is blamed, who is mourned, what gets turned into a rhyme because it was easier to sing than say plainly. The official version is usually tidy. The song is where the mess leaks through.
That feels truer to how stories survive anyway. People keep the bits that fit in the mouth.
Songs can do that, but they can also lie very efficiently. A tune is a brilliant way to smuggle in bias, propaganda, embarrassment, all the things a kingdom would rather not put in a chronicle. Which is useful, really. If everyone in the inn knows the same verse and nobody can agree on the third line, you’ve already got a story engine.