Barbara Allen- (SC) c1913 Wise/ Reed Smith C
[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
C. "Barbara Allen." Communicated by Professor H. A. Wise, of Converse College, Spartanburg, S. C., in 1913. Professor Wise recorded it in a Richland County mill village.
1. Yonder come three maids,
All dressed in scarlet red,
And there is not but one that I call mine,
And that is Barbara Allen,
And that is Barbara Allen.
There is not but one that I call mine,
And that is Barbara Allen.
2. It was in the fall time of the year,
When cider was a-broaching,
He handed cider to the ladies round,
But he slighted Barbara Allen.
3. Johnnie Green took very sick,
He sent for Barbara Allen,
He sent his servant to the town
To search for Barbara Allen.
4. And slowly Barbara she got up,
And slowly she came to him;
She lifted the curtain where he lay,
"Young man, I believe you are dying."
5. "I'm sick, I'm sick, I'm [1] sick,
I am in my death bed lying;
And never will no better be
Till I get Barbara Alien."
6. "You are sick, you are sick, you are very sick,
You are on your death bed lying;
And if you never no better be
You will never get Barbara Allen.
7. "For it was in fall time of the year,
When cider was a-broaching;
You handed cider to the ladies round,
But you slighted Barbara Allen."
8. He turned his eyes upon the wall,
Again he looked upon her;
"So fare you well to all my friends,
But be kind to Barbara Allen."
9. She bade him good-by. and started home,
With sorrow in her bosom;
She had not got far from the town
When she heard strange bells a-ringing.
10. And she turned round and she looked back,
And she saw his corpse a-coming:
"Unfold, unfold that milk white sheet,
And let me look upon him."
11. The more she looked the more she wept,
Until she grew far from him,
. . . .
. . . .
12. "O Mother, O mother, go make my bed!
Go make it soft and easy;
F or Johnnie Green died for me to-day,
And I'll die for him to-morrow."
13 " O Father, O Father, go dig my grave,
Go dig it deep and narrow;
For Johnnie Green died for me in love,
I'll die for him in sorrow."
14 They dug two graves in Steven's yard,
They dug them side by side;
In one they laid Johnnie Green,
In the other Barbara Allen.
15. On Johnnie Green's there sprang a rose,
On Barbara's sprang a brier;
They grew and grew to mountains high,
For they could go no higher.
And there they tied in a true love knot
For all young maids to admire.
1. I'm very sick (to agree with next stanza).