Barb'ra Allen- (NC) c.1921 Sutton/Brown 4S1; Bronson 59
[My date. Partial text (first stanza) given with music. From the Brown Collection; Volume 4, 1957. The Brown editors' notes follow. At the bottom of this page I'll put Bronson's listing, which is the same song in the key of G.
R. Matteson 2015]
27. Bonny Barbara Allan (Child 84)
Of all the ballads in the Child collection this is easily the most widely known and sung, both in the old country and in America. Scarcely a single regional gathering of ballads but has it, and it has been published in unnumbered popular songbooks. See BSM 60-1. Mrs. Eckstorm in a letter written in 1940 informed me that she and Barry had satisfied themselves, before Barry's death, that as sung by Mrs. Knipp to the delight of Samuel Pepys in 1666 it was not a stage song at all but a libel on Barbara Villiers and her relations with Charles II; but so far as I know the details of their argument have never been published. The numerous texts in the North Carolina collection may conveniently be grouped according to the setting in three divisions: (1) those that begin in the first person of Barbara's lover (or at least of the narrator), (2) those that begin with a springtime setting, and (3) those that begin with an autumnal setting. Of course those in group 1 may also have either the springtime or the autumnal setting. The rose-and-brier ending is likely to be attached to any of the texts. The lover's bequests to Barbara, a feature not infrequent in modern British versions but unusual in America, appears once in the North Carolina texts, in F. The first person of the lover commonly is dropped after the opening stanza, but in F it holds through four stanzas. Not all of the texts are given in full.
S(1) 'Barbara Allen.' I. G. Greer? Dr. White attributes this to Mrs. Sutton. There is, in either case, no place or date given.
At the end of the section dealing with Barbara Allen, No. 27, in vol. II, 131 there is mention of a sheet "on which is written a tune set to the first stanza of 'Barbara Allen' and the stanza of 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet' . . . ." There is such a sheet, but it contains two distinct melodies, one for 'Barbara Allen,' the other for 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet.' Our version here is the
first on that sheet. Both tunes are given with their texts.
For melodic relationship cf. **SharpK i 183, No. 24A, measures 4-8, 185, No. 24C, measures 3-8; 191, No. 24I, measures 3-6; 195, No. 24N, general tendency, and No. 24P, beginning; FSoA 8; OFS i 127, No. 21 A; BSM 62, version G; FSF 285, No. 161B; and SFSEA 150, No. 131. *FSKM 40. Scale: Mode III, plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: abcd (2,2,2,2).
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From Bronson No. 59 (with identical music in key G).
"Lady and her children Three (Barbara Allen)" Brown MSS., 16 a H. From Fletcher (? D. W. Fletcher,Durham?)
A nearly identical copy of this, in C, and marked with a query as from Greer, is among Brown MSS 16 a 4 D; and another from Greer or Sutton, is classed 16 a.4 H. The latter is apparently Schinhan's S(1), in Music, Brown Collection, IV, 1957, p. 64.
Early one morning in the month or May,
The buds were all a-swelling
Sweet William lay on his death bed
For the love of Barbra Allen.