Barbara Allen- Clark (TN) c. 1906 McDowell A
[My date, most of this collection is from the 1890s. From: Memory Melodies- A Collection of Folk-Songs from Middle Tennessee- McDowell; 1947
This is the first of three versions of Child No. 84, Barbara Allen, the most widely collected Child ballad.
R. Matteson 2015]
A. BARBARA ALLEN
1. Away down low, in Stony Town,
There were three maids a-dwelling;
There was but one that I called my own;
Her name was Barbara Allen.
2. It was in the month of May,
The buds were all a-swelling;
Sweet William Gray on his deathbed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
3. He sent a servant to the town
He sent him to her dwelling.
"My master's sick and sent for you,
If your name be Barbara Allen."
4 Slowly, slowly, she rose up,
And slowly she came to him,
But all she said when she got there,
"Young man, I think you're a-dying."
5 "I know I'm sick, and very sick
I know that I am dying,
I drink my wine, with ladies fine
But I love Barbara Allen."
6. Coldly, coldly, rose she up,
And coldly said unto him,
"You drink your wine with ladies fine,
Yet you love Barbara Allen."
7. She walked out one mile from town,
She spied his corpse a-coming,
"Oh bring him here and lay him down
That I may gaze upon him. "
8. Sweet William was buried in one churchyard
And Barbara in another,
The pair that died for true love's sake
There buried on Easter Monday
The above version of the words was furnished by Mrs. Agnes (Mrs. D. B.) Clark, of Walling, Tennessee, Rural Route One. This is the neighborhood of the Old Camp Ground, the farm home of Mrs. Clark adjoining the one on which L. L. McDowell was born and reared. He remembers distinctly hearing his father sing portions of this version, particularly the first verse.
Several other and somewhat different versions of the words of Barbara Allen have been collected in the same section of country, but there is practically no variation in the tune as written above throughout all the valley of the Caney Fork.