Barbara Allen- (SC) c1862 Reed Smith D
[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
D. "Barbara Allen." Communicated from Darlington County, S. C., by a correspondent of The State newspaper, in which it appeared February 29, 1912, accompanied by the following account of its origin:
"It has been over forty years ago, when I was a boy at my father's home in Darlington County, my cousin sang the song as she frequently did, not only this one, but 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,' 'Drummer Boy of Waterloo,' 'Kitty Wells,' 'When This Cruel War Is Over,''Who Will Care for Mother Now,'; and others. I don't remember, if I ever knew, what were the troubles
of Barbaru Allen and Young William, but I remember the plaintive, mournful tune and it brings back to my recollection the scent of cape jessamine and mimosa blossoms, the note of the whippoorwill, and the peculiar halloo of the negroes."
The text is typical of most of the shorter South Carolina variants, as A is of the longer ones.
1. 'T was in the pleasant month of May,
When all young buds were swelling;
Young William on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
2. He sent his servant to her house,
He sent him to her dwelling;
"My master's sick and sends for you
If you be Barbara Allen."
3. She came at once unto his bed,
And saw him gently lying;
She took one look at him and said,
Young man, I see you're dying.
4. "Oh! mother, mother, dig my grave,
Dig it both deep and narrow;
Young William died for me today
And I for him to morrow."
5. Young William died on Saturday morn,
And Barbara died on Sunday,
And both the parents that Barbara loved,
They died on Easter Monday.