Barbara Allen- (SC) published 1912 Reed Smith E
[Reed Smith; South Carolina Ballads, 1928. His notes follow. This was published in the newspaper along with Smith D, however the source info is not provided for this version.
The arrangement of lines - makes no sense in places, some being doubled.
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
E. "Barbara Allen." Communicated, together with variant C [variant D], to the columns of The State newspaper, Feb. 29, 1912.
1. One Monday morning in the month of May,
Sweet William courted a fair young girl,
Her name was Barbara Allen.
He courted her six months or more, and was about to gain her favor,
When she says "O, wait, young man, do wait,
For young men's minds do waver."
2. As he went home, was taken sick, and sent for Barbara Allen.
She came; she came so slow, she came to see her true love dying.
She says: "Young man, you are a-dying."
"One kiss from your red rosy lips would save me, Barbara Allen."
She says: "If one kiss would kill you dead, I 'd freely give a hundred."
3. He turned his face to the milk-white walls; his back to Barbara Allen.
"Don't you remember, the other day, when you were at the tavern,
You spent your wealth with the fair young girls, and slighted Barbara Allen?"
"When I am dead, look under my head; you'll find two rolls of money.
Go share them around with the fair young girls, and share with Barbara Allen."
4. She hadn't got more than a mile from town, when she heard the death bells ringing,
She looked to the East and looked to the West, a-wringing her hands and crying.
She looked up and down both ends of the road, and she saw his corpse a-coming.
5. She said: "Go bring him along, and let me look upon him.
He once was red, but now he's dead - all his beauty has left him.
Go dig my grave, dear Father," says she. "Go dig it long and deep[1],
Sweet William died for me to-day, and I shall die to-morrow.
Go make my pillow, Mother," says she. "Go make it long and narrow.
Sweet William died for love to-day, and I shall die to-morrow."
6. Go bury Sweet William in one church yard, and Barbara in another.
From Sweet William's grave there sprung a rose, from Barbara's sprung a briar.
They grew to the new church wall, till they could grow no higher,
There they wrapped and tied a true love's knot,
That they might live and never part,
And for all true-lovers to admire.
1. narrow; to rhyme