Barbara Allan- Hale (VA) 1914 Davis J
[From Traditional Ballads of Virginia; Davis, 1929. His notes follow. It's unlikely the Barbara was sung in 3 syllables.
R. Matteson 2015]
TRADITIONAL BALLADS OF VIRGINIA
BONNY BARBARA ALLAN (Child, No. 84)
For the Virginia ballads, "Barbara Allen" is facile princeps in the number of items collected, both of texts and of music. Her ninety-two Virginia progeny are something of a record achievement, certainly for a lady who, according to the ballad, scorned her lover. One is thankful she did not encourage him! Many-of these ninety-two items are, of course, mere repetition and fragmentation; but when all refuse is set aside, a surprising number of healthy and differing texts remain, of which some thirty-six are here presented. Many of the excluded texts were discarded only after an editorial-pang, and have perhaps an equal claim to appear. An even dozen melodies, many of them quite similar but never identical, uphold the ballad's prestige in the musical line.
The ballad is known in Virginia as "Barbara Allen" or "Barbara Ellen" - with variant spellings - once as "Barbara Allen's Cruelty." In market contrast to the fidelity with which Barbara's name is preserved are the many titles of her lover. In the texts that follow he appears as Sweet William (9 times), Sweet Willie (4 times), Young Jimmy (3 times), Young Jimmy Grove (2 times); once each he is William, Willie, William Ryley, Sweet Jimmy, Young Jimmy Groves, Sweet Jimmy Grove, Young Jimmy Grame, Sir James Graham, Sir James the Graham (and Sweet Jimmy), Sir James of the Grave, Young Jamie Grove, John Green, and Johnny; and once (not counting the "music only " fragments) he is unnamed.
Both the Child A and B versions are represented in the Virginia texts, with many variations, additions, and combinations of the two. To record, with references, all the variations and affiliations of the Virginia texts would require a statistician, not an editor. But certain interesting features may be here pointed out, and some slight guidance offered through the texts that follow.
In the first place, the familiar "rose-and-brier" ending (see head-note to Virginia 18, above), which does not appear in any Child version of the ballad, appears more or less regularly in Virginia texts. Whether or not this was originally supplied from "Fair Margaret and Sweet William," as is suggested also by the hero's name in many variants and by a general similarity of theme in the two ballads, the ending has become an integral part of the most popular Virginia version of "Barbara Allen." Excluding fragments, there are only some half dozen Virginia texts without this ending (see L-O). These conclude usually with Barbara's farewell exhortation to "the virgins all" to "shun the fault she fell in." Cf. Cox, A 16, p. 98.
Still more interesting and important is the fact that the young man's defense of himself against Barbara's accusation of his slighting her appears with some regularity in the Virginia texts (see A-I, L, and P). No much defense is found in any Child version. Moreover, in Virginia A and B, two stanzas of accusation from Barbara are replied to in turn by the man. In A he distinguishes clearly between his love for her and his interest in "the ladies all." In B he defends himself against the first accusation and pleads guilty to the second. Dr. Smith's article on "Ballads Surviving in the United States" (Musical Quarterly, II, 109-129) has some interesting comments on these additional stanzas. Having just quoted Child A in full, he remarks: "The printed versions vary but little from the incidents as here narrated. But the story as a story has always seemed to me to be flawed by the silence of Sir John under the accusation brought against him. The reader infers, of course, that Barbara's charge in stanza, five is unjust but, in view of the tragic denouement, artistic balance demands some sort of exculpatory answer from Sir John. At any rate, I felt a sense of profound relief when a version came in from Buchanan County, Virginia, with four additional stanzas. The singer had never seen a printed copy of the song but, had always heard it sung with these stanzas in place of stanza five. [Here he quotes Virginia A 7-10.] It is possible of course that this better constructed version may be as old as any version known to us." And he proceed to establish this fact.
Virginia texts C-I, L, and P all have one stanza of accusation, one of defense. J has one stanza of accusation and another, also by Barbara elaborating its consequences, with no defense offered by the man. In K the man acknowledges the slight, as in B 8. In several other texts the accusation is made without reply from the man, the usual Child A form. The two stanzas of accusation and two of self-defense are extremely rare. An excellent text of this sort from northern Louisiana, sent by Professor Pierce Butler, of the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, New Orleans, found its way into the Virginia collection, and the four significant stanzas may be given here in comparison with Virginia A and B:
"Oh, do you remember last Saturday night
When you sat in the alehouse drinking,
You drank to the health of a pretty fair maid,
Nor thought of Barbara Allen."
"Oh, yes, I remember last Saturday night
When I sat in the alehouse drinking.
I drank to the health of a pretty fair maid,
But I thought of Barbara Allen."
"And do you remember that night at the ball,
With the lights about us gleaming?
You danced with many a pretty fair maid,
And you slighted Barbara Allen."
"Oh, yes, I remember that night at the ball,
With the lights about us gleaming.
I danced with many a pretty fair maid,
But I dreamed of Barbara Allen."
And more properly, belonging here are the three analogous stanzas of a Virginia text sent by Mr. Henry A. Wise from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The full text, though recorded, is not to be found among the Virginia archives, but Reed Smith's head-note gives these stanzas in which the lover replies so differently:
"O Jimmie, don't you remember the time
When you walked into the tavern,
And passed the health of the ladies ail around,
And slighted Barbara Allen?"
" You go look under the head of my bed,
And there you'll find a basin;
And in that basin, one drop of my blood
To remember Barbara Allen."
"You go look under the foot of my bed,
And there you'll find a napkin;
And in that napkin a gay gold ring
For the love of Barbara Allen.;
In P and Q the young man in his farewell breathes an ominous curse for Barbara, and in P Barbara returns the curse in her dying farewell. Usually the man dies with a mere farewell to Barbara or with kind expressions for her; sometimes he even heaps gifts upon her. And Barbara is elsewhere uniformly repentant at the close.
In R-T the young man offers presents to Barbara (seven ships in R) or leaves her money (five thousand pounds in S) or does both (a gold watch and ten thousand pounds and-fifty in T). In U Barbara rides away in a fine carriage, possibly a present from her lover. The victim's generosity stands out in contrast to Barbara's cruelty and adds to the poignancy of the tragedy.
These texts S and T especially, may be thought of as showing some connection with the ballad in Buchin's MS., mentioned by Child, in which the dying lover leaves his watch and gold ring, his Bible and pen- knife, a mill and thirty ploughs, nine meal-mills and the freights of nine ships, all to tocher Barbara Allan."
V, like A, mentions that Barbara is chosen from three maids or three ladies with whom she dwells - a detail not found in Child.
In W Barbara blames her cruelty on her mother (as quite explicitly in J 9), and the mother also joins the lovers in death, as she does also in X and Y, but without being otherwise implicated in the tragedy. In many versions, after the mother has been called on to make the daughter's bed, the father is called on to dig the daughter's grave - a quite natural division of labor.
Of the miscellaneous later variants, has a line contaminated from "Pretty Peggy- O." In AA the messenger is a nephew of the sick man; in BB a little boy is hired, and Barbara resides in Strawberry Town (cf. Cox D). CC-JJ are fragments or music only.
C is an especially interesting Negro version of the ballad, Miss Scarborough, who "had wondered if the Negroes had failed to appreciate and appropriate this most familiar and beloved of all ballads," was especially pleased when Dr. Smith sent her this text. Another Negro text has an occasional "Lord, hand me down" refrain and the ending
"Lord, Lord, hand me down.
That the last of Bober Allen."
A frequent shift of the angle of narration is to be noted in many Virginia texts. Child B changes from first to third person after the first stanza, but the shifting is hardly carried to the protean extreme of Virginia D and other Virginia texts which more or less follow Child B. See the footnote to Virginia D.
Five of the twelve melodies in the book were printed by Dr. Smith in his Musical Quarterly article, along with two British melodies, and from the comparison he draws important conclusions about the relationship of British and American ballad airs. He says: "Among the following musical arrangements of Barbara Allen, one from Scotland, one from England, and five recently
transcribed from the lips of the singers in Virginia, no one of whom understood music, the differences are so great that it would hardly be safe to select any two and say that they are related by direct derivation, though four are current in the same county: [Here are printed seven notations of the ballad: A, from " Select Melodies of Scotland"; B, from "The Minstrelsy of England"; C, from Rockingham County, Va. (Virginia HH); and D, E, F, and G, from Campbell County, Va. (Virgina AA, II, H, and U, respectively)].
"Even if a similar strain be heard in A, C, and F, and if E be found to suggest G, the relationship would seem to be collateral rather than lineal. Priority, in other words, can hardly be affirmed of any of these melodies until more data be thrown upon the scales. When Pepys in 1666 lauded the 'little Scotch song of Barbary Allen' and when Goldsmith a century later declared that 'the music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Goodnight or the Cruelty of Barbara Allen, both may have been praising, so far as we know, a melody unrecorded in books and heard today, if heard at all, only in some shadowed lane or mountain cove or lonely farm-house of the United States. Who can say?"
For other American texts and melodies, see Barry, No. 22; Belden, No. 7; Bulletin, Nos. 2-10; Campbell and sharp, No. 21 (Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia); Cox, No. 16, and p. 523 (nine texts and two melodies); Heart songs, p. 247; Hudson, No. 13 and Journal, XXXIX, 971 Mississippi); Jones, p. 301 (fragment); Journal, VI, 131 (Edmands, North Carolina); XIX, 286 (Belden, Missouri, Indiana); XX, 256 (Kittredge, Kentucky); XXII, 63 (Beatty, Kentucky); XXVI, 352 (Pound, Nebraska, fragment); XXVIII, 144 (Perrow, Mississippi); XXIX, 160 (Tolman, Virginia), 198 (Rawn and Peabody, Georgia, fragment); XXXV, 343 (Tolman and Eddy, Ohio, fragment and melody, Kentucky, fragment and melody); XXXIX, 211 (M.E. Henry, North Carolina); McGill, p. 40; Mackenzie, p. 100; Mackenzie, Ballads, No. 9, and p. 393; Pound, Syllabus, p.9 (fragment); Pound, Ballads No. 3; Sandburg, p. 57; Scarborough, p. 59 Virginia, sent by C. A. Smith); Shearin, p. 3 (fragment); Shearin and Combs, p. 8; Shoemaker, p. 122; C. A. Smith, p. 12 (British version), p. 13 (Virginia, fragment), p. 20; (Great Britain, Virginia, seven melodies only); Reed Smith, No. 8; Reed Smith, Ballads, No. 8; Wyman and Brockway; p. 1. For additional references, see Cox, p. 96; Journal, XXIX, 160; XXXI 317; XXXVI 343
J. "Barbara Allen." Sent in by Professor J.M. Grainger. Collected by Miss Kathleen Hale, of the Farmville Ballad Club. Sung by Mrs. E. W. Hale, of Falmouth, Va. Giles County. March 16, 1914.
1 'T was in the early month of May,
When green buds were a-swelling,
Sweet Jimmie Grove on his death-bed lay,
For the love of Barbara Allen.
2 He sent his servant to the town'
In which that she was dwelling;
"Say, my master's sick and sent for you,
If Your name be Barbara Allen."
3 Then slowly, slowly got she up
And swiftly she went to him;
She softly walked the chamber round
"Young man, I think you are dying."
4 "Oh yes, I'm sick, I'm very sick,
And death is in my dwelling;
Oh Yes, I'm sick, and very sick
For the love of Barbara Allen."
5 "Do You not recall in yonder town,
While we were all a-drinking,
You treated all the ladies round
And slighted Barbara Allen?
6 " And though you are sick, and very sick,
Though death be in your dwelling,
Because of the slight you gave to me,
You'll never get Barbara Allen."
7 He turned his white face to the wall
And his back to Barbara Allen;
"Adieu, adieu to all my friends,
Be kind to Barbara Allen."
8 She hadn't gone more than a mile from the place
Till she heard his death-bell ringing;
Nor had she gone more than five miles from the place,
Till she saw his corpse a-coming.
9 "Oh, lay him in the cold, cold clay
And let me look upon him;
O mother dear, you caused all this;
You would not let me have him.
10 "And father, father, dig my grave,
And dig it deep and narrow.
Sweet Jimmie dies for me today,
I'll die for him tomorrow."
11 Sweet Jimmie was buried in the South Church yard,
And Barbara in the other.
A rose bush sprang from one of their breasts,
A briar from the other.
12 They grew, they grew, till they reach the church-top;
They grew till they couldn't grow higher;
They grew and tied a true love-knot,
The rose wrapped round the briar.