A Near Eastern Parallel to "Barbara Allen"
A Near Eastern Parallel to "Barbara Allen"
by Bacil F. Kirtley
Midwest Folklore, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1955), pp. 105-106
A NEAR EASTERN PARALLEL TO "BARBARA ALLEN"
By BACIL F. KIRTLEY
Despite the popularity of "Barbara Allen" in the Anglo-American tradition, folkorists apparently have cited for the ballad only a few, rather dubious foreign parallels. Mr. Cambiaire' states that an ancient Spanish romance-based possibly, he conjectures, on a story descending from "pre-historic times" -shares a common theme with "Barbara Allen." Since he does not name this romance, however, its degree of resemblance to the ballad cannot be appraised. Another parallel has been suggested by Mr. Babcock,[2] who finds a Serbian ballad which, he feels, is similar to "Barbara Allen." An analysis of the two reveals indeed that they possess in common narrative elements: young lovers die; twining plants sprout from their graves (the latter motif does not occur in British versions, but is common in America).[3]
Yet, the Serbian ballad plot lacks several incidents usually found in "Barbara Allen." In the former no quarrel separates the lovers as in the Anglo-American ballad; instead, they are kept apart by interfering parents (of the girl?). The maiden does not appear while the young man lies upon his death bed, and she does not die of remorse, as a kind of atonement, for her own cruelty. Rather, she and the young man consummate a suicide pact.
"The Lovers of the Banu Ozrah," a tale occuring in The Thousand Nights and a Night,[4] resembles the Anglo-American ballad in a number of details. The story tells of a handsome and accomplished young man who fell in love with a beauty of his tribe. The maiden, doubting his sincerity, rejected his suit and refused to see him; whereupon he became seriously ill. When, urged by kinsmen, she consented to visit him, he lay upon his death-bed. The maiden at last realized the seriousness of his passion and, after he died in her presence, "-she fell again to weeping, nor gave over shedding tears and lamenting till she fainted away; and she lay three days, senseless. Then she died and was buried in his grave."[5]
The Near Eastern story differs from a number of ballad versions in two details. In the tale the girl relents during the scene at her lover's bedside, not after his death, as in the ballad. Also, in the tale the girl holds aloof from her lover because she doubts his sincerity, not because she cherishes a grudge, as in a number of versions of "Barbara Allen." In spite of these differences, however, the plots of the ballad and of the tale are sufficiently alike to suggest the possibility of a "genetic" relationship.
University of West Virginia
Morgantown, W. Va.
Footnotes:
1 Celestin Pierre Cambiaire, East Tennessee and Western Virginia Mountain Ballads (London, 1934), 68.
2 C. Merton Babcock, "A Serbian Parallel to 'Barbara Allen'," Western Folklore, VIII (1949), 371.
3 See Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, 1950), 87-90. The supposed parallels mentioned here are cited -by Mr. Coffin.
4. Sir Richard Burton, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (New York, 1934), III, 1645-1647. The tale is told during the 383rd and 384th nights.
5 Ibid., 1647.