Barb'ra Ellen- Rathbone (NC) 1918 Sharp MS
[My title. Single stanza with music from Bronson TTCB II, No. 74 as taken from Sharp MSS, 4738/. Sharp's diary notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Sharp diary 1918 page 277. Tuesday 1 October 1918 - Burnsville
Wrote long letter to Mrs Sidgwick after breakfast and then caught the train to Wisdom, travelling thither with Mrs Chesebrough. Walked up Shoal Creek and called on the McConnor’s finding the husband at home. He does not know any songs but plays the fiddle and as his fiddle is at the doctors he couldn’t play to us. Then on, under a very hot sun, to Mrs Sina Boone’s eating our lunch on the way. She sang us about 10 more songs and that with the 12 we have already got from her represents about the whole of her repertoire. Then on the way back we found old Sam Rathbone cutting shingles. He is a regular Irishman — though half English by birth — and used to know any number of songs but has recently given them up for sacred ones! However he sang us 3 or 4 and then we walked all the way home, singing — by request — a song at Mrs Young’s on the way. Very tired on getting home. I felt terribly done up after supper, quite collapsed, and rather feverish. So I went to bed about 8.30. Curiously enough I felt unusually well when we started out this morning & remarked on it to Maud.
[Barb'ra Ellen] - Sung by Sims Rathbone, Shoal Creek, Burnsville, N.C., October 1, 1918.
In Starling Town where I was born,
Where all fair maids were dwelling,
You drunk a health to the ladies 'round
And slighted Barb'ra Ellen.