Bluegrass Messengers

Arise and Bar The Door, O- Gamsby (MI) 1935

[From: Ballads anof Southern d Songs Michigan by Gardner and Chickering.]

53.  ARISE AND BAR THE DOOR-O
(Get up and Bar the Door, Child, No 275)

This text is similar to Child A, although Child's version has eleven stanzas and no refrain. Child (V, 96-99), however, says that Christie (II, 262) gives as a refrain "common in the north of Scotland from time immemorial,

"And the barring o' our door, weel, weel, weel,
And the barring o' our door, weel."

Child B and C relate a similar story to that in A concerning John Blunt and his wife, and Child notes that many tales have a similar plot. For a text of the same length as this Michigan one and with a similar refrain see Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, pp. 318-321, text B. See also Davis, pp. 495-496, and Greig, pp. 216-218. For texts more like Child B see Combs, pp. 147-148; Cox, pp. 516-517; and Greenleaf and Mansfield, pp. 41-42.

The present version was sung in 1935 by Mrs. Frank Gamsby, Saranac; as a young girl she learned the song from her sister, who had heard a Scottish boy sing it.
   
   
1 It happened aboot the Middlemas time,
And a gay time it was then O,
When our guid wife had puddens to mak
And she boiled them in the pan O.

Chorus: The barrin' o' our door, will, will, will,
'Tis the barrin' o' door, will.

2    They made a poction 'tween them twa,
They made it firm and sure O,
Whoever spoke the foremost word
Should arise and bar the door O.

3    Along there came twa gentlemen
At twelve o'clock at nicht O;
And they could see neither hoose nor hair
Nor cool nor candle licht O.

4    Then says the ain unti the ither,
"D'ye take my guid knife O,
D'ye take off the old mon's beard;
I'll gie kiss the guid wife O."

5    Then up started our guid mon,
Gie three skups o'er die floor O,
"Would ye kiss me guid wife before me een
And scald me wi puddin bree O?"

6   Then up started our guid wife,
Gie three skups o'er the floor O,
"My guid mon, you've spoken the foremost word,
Arise and bar the door O."