Barbara Allen- Collom (MI) c. 1875 Gardner A
[From: Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan by Emelyn- Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939. No texts are provided for Version B and C which are listed as follows:
Version B: Sung in 1935 by Mrs. Allan McClellan, near Bad Axe; she had learned the song when she was about fifteen years old. A good text of eleven stanzas.
Version C: Sung in 1930 by Mrs Charles Cleary, Ypsilanti, who said that she had always known the song and had contributed her version to Heart Songs, edited by J. M. Chappie, Boston, 1909. A fairly complete version of six stanzas.
R. Matteson 2012]
8. BARBARA ALLEN
(Bonny Barbara Allan, Child, No 84)
Child cites Chappell as saying that this ballad first appeared in print in Ramsay's Miscellany in 1740. It is mentioned in an entry in Pepys' Diary, January 2, 1666. It was referred to by Goldsmith, with the title "Cruelty of Barbara Allen," in his third essay, 1765, p. 14, and was included in Bishop Percy's Rehques of Ancient Poetry, III (1765), 125; II (1846), 122-124. (The former reference may be readily found by consulting Essays of Oliver Goldsmith, II, 16, in the edition published by the Bibliophile Society of Boston in 1928.) Child (II, 276-279) gives only three versions, but Michigan A has the shift in narration from first to third person that is in Child B, and the general outlines of the tragedy are somewhat similar. For texts, references, and comments see Allsopp, II, 212--213; Barbour, JAFL, XLIX, 207-209; Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, pp. 195-200; Bulletin, X, 23-24; Davis (thirty-six versions), pp. 302-345; Eddy, No. ri; Fauset, pp. 113-115; Greenleaf and Mansfield, pp. 26-27; J1FSS, II, 45; Kittredge, JAFL, XX, 256--57, XXX, 317; Mackenzie, pp. 35-40, Scarborough, pp. 83-97; Sharp, 1,183-195; Shoemaker, pp. 127-130; Stout, pp 8-10; and Thomas, pp. 94-95.
Version A was sung in 1935 by Mrs. David Collom, Grindstone City, who learned the song about sixty years earlier from her mother, at Howick, Ontario, Canada; the latter had heard it sung by her mother.
A. Barbara Allen
1 In Scotland I was bred and born,
In London was my dwelling;
I courted there a pretty girl,
And her name was Barbara Allen.
2 I courted her some months and years,
And the time had come to win her.
She often vowed and did declare
No man on earth should have her.
3 'Twas in the springtime o£ the year
When all fair flowers were blooming,
That Squire Grey a-dying lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
4 He sent his servant unto her house,
The house of Barbara Allen:
"My master wants to have you come
If your name is Barbara Allen."
5 Slowly she arose, put on her clothes,
How long she was a-going;
She was one long, long summer day
And just one mile a-going.
6 As she was walking up the steps,
She said, "Young man, you're dying."
"Dying, dying, O yes," he said,
"For the love of Barbara Allen."
7 "O don't you mind, young man," she said,
"When the red wine you were filling,
You drank the healths all round the room,
But you slighted Barbara Allen?
And the better for me you never shall be,
Though your heart's blood were a-spilling.
8 "Look down, look down, by my bedside,
And there you will find a basin,
A basin filled with my heart's blood
That I shed for Barbara Allen."
9 He turned his face unto the wall,
For death was with him dealing,
"Adieu, kind friends and kindred all,
Be kind to Barbara Allen."
10 As she was walking down the steps,
She heard the bells a-tolling;
And every bell, it seemed to say
"Hard-hearted Barbara Allen."
11 As she was walking out one day,
She met a funeral coming:
"Lay down, lay down this corpse of clay,
That I may gaze upon him."
12 She gazed upon this corpse of clay
Till her heart would break of sorrow,
Saying, "My true love died for me today,
I'll die for him tomorrow."
13 So one was laid in the churchyard,
The other in the choir;
And out of one grave grew a red rose,
The other grew sweet briar.
14 They grew and they grew to the church spire top
Till they could grow no higher;
And there entwined in a lovers' knot,
The red rose and sweet briar.