Barbara Allen- Compton (SC) 1913 Reed Smith A
[Reed Smith; South Carolina Ballads, 1928. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
BONNY BARBARA ALLEN
(Child, No. 84)
OF all the ballads in America "Barbara Allen" leads both in number of versions, number of tunes, and in geographical distribution. It is found all over the United states. As in the case of "Lord Lovel," its wide American popularity is not due entirely to oral tradition, but in certain measure to print. This ballad has appeared in ten song books and several broadsides. See A. H. Tolman, "Some Songs Traditional in the United States," JAFL,vol. XXIX, p. 60, note 2; and G.L. Kittredge, "Ballads and songs," JAFL, 101 XXX, p. 317. It was first published in America in the American Songster, Baltimore, 1836, and next in the southern Warbler, Charleston, 1845. Recently, it was included in Heart songs, Boston, 1909. This collection of old favorites was the result of a contest in musical popularity conducted by the National Magazine, and is described as "contributed by 25,000 people."
The tunes "Barbara Allen" is sung to are as varied as is texts. Six different airs are recorded from New England, and many from all the southern states differing not only from each other, but from the scotch melody in Thomson's Select Melodies of Scotland, 1822, and the English air in Duncan's The Minstrelsy of England, 1905. The two South Carolina melodies printed below are entirely different, as are the tunes in Heart Songs and in Campbell and Sharp.
"Bonny Barbara Allen" was first printed in England in The Tea-Table Miscellany, 1740, and next in Percy's Religues, 1765. The same year 1765, Goldsmith wrote in his third essay: "The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with 'Johnnie Armstrong's Last Goodnight,' or '"The cruelty of Barbara Allen.' " It was, however, known at least a hundred years earlier. Percy makes the following reference to it in his Diary under the date of January 2, 1666; "In perfect pleasure I was to hear her [Mrs. Knipp, an actress] sing, and especially her little Scotch song of 'Barbara Allen.' There is no way of telling how much earlier the song was composed, for of course neither the first appearance of a ballad in print nor the first published contemporary reference to it has any necessary relation to its age. A ballad may be current in oral tradition several hundred years before it gets into print. or, for that matter, it may arise, flourish, and die out without being recorded in writing at all, and thus disappear without leaving a trace of its ever having existed.
Campbell and Sharp give ten texts and ten tunes, and Cox gives nine full texts and describes three others. Sharp gives a good text and tune and speaks of the ballad's English prevalence as follows, "There is no ballad that country singers are more fond of than of 'Barbara Ellen,' or 'Barborous Ellen' or, or 'Edelin,' as it is usually called. I have taken down as many as twenty-seven variants." For other English references, see Sharp, Notes, p. xx; and for American references, Cox's headnotes, p. 96
A. "Barbara Allen." Communicated by Mr. W. B. Compton, of Aiken County, S.C., in 1913. Mr. Compton says of it: "These old songs have been rehearsed from time to time by Mrs. Alice Day Compton, to whom they were sung by her mother, Mrs. Martha O'Neall Day, who was born in 1829." This variant consists of twelve stanzas, which are printed as six to conform to the melody. It most nearly resembles Child's Version B, which was taken from Percy's Reliques.
1. In Scarlet Town where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwelling,
Made every youth cry wail away,[1]
Her name was Barbara Allen"
All in the merry month of May,
When green buds then were swelling,
Young Jamie Grove on his deathbed lay
For love of Barbara Allen.
2. And death is printed on his face,
And o'er his heart is stealin';
Then haste away to comfort him,
O lovely Barbara Allen.
So slowly, slowly she came up,
And slowly she came nigh him:
And all she said when there she came,
"Young man, I think you're dying."
3. He turned his face unto the wall,
And death was with him dealin'.
"Adieu, adieu, my friends all,
Adieu Barbara Allen!"
As she was walkin' o'er the fields,
She heard the bells a-knellin';
And every stroke did seem to say:
"Unworthy Barbara Allen."
4. She turned her body round about,
She spied the corpse a-coming;
"Lay down, lay down the corpse," she said,
"That I may look upon him."
With scornful eyes she looked down,
Her cheeks with laughter swelling,
Whilst all her friends cried out amain,
"Unworthy Barbara Allen."
5. When he was dead and in his grave,
Her heart was struck with sorrow;
"Oh, mother, mother, make my bed
For I shall die tomorrow.
Hard-hearted creature him to slight,
Who loved me so dearly,
Oh that I'd been more kind to him,
When he was alive and near me."
6. She on her deathbed as she lay,
Begged to be buried by him,
And sore repented of the day
That she did ere deny him.
"Farewell," she said, "ye maidens all
And shun the fault I fell in.
Henceforth take warning by the fall
Of cruel Barbara Allen."