Barbara Allen- Keener (WV) 1957 Musick A (I)
[From: Ballads and Folksongs from West Virginia by Ruth Ann Musick; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 70, No. 277 (Jul. - Sep., 1957), pp. 247-261. Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2012]
13. Perhaps the most widely known of all ballads, this is in almost every collection; see especially Percy's Reliques; Belden, pp. 60-65; Brewster, pp. 99-121; Chappell, p. 32; Cox, pp. 96-109; Leach, pp. 277-280; Mackenzie, pp. 35-40; McGill, pp. 39-40; Morris, pp. 283-290; Randolph, I, 126-139; Scarborough, pp. 93-97; Sharp, I, I83-I95; Wells, pp. 113-114.
9. "Barbara Allen" (Bonny Barbara Allen, Child 84) [13]
9.I. This contribution, by Mr. Keener, who learned it from "old Mrs. Lemley" of Wetzel County, has the tune that is most widely known-but the text is unusual. Perhaps someone read into the term "Scarlet Town" a wicked meaning and decided the tavern
was a bawdy house. Verses are missing between (2) and (6). (See Ex. 14.)
(1) In a scarlet town where I was born,
There was an ill-famed dwelling;
A tavern house where all men drank
The toast of Barbara Allen.
(2) No fairer maid has ever lived,
Nor bore so much of sorrow,
For wagging tongues and idle hearts
Her love from her did borrow.
(6) Said, "Barbara, I am dying."
But from his bed she turned her head,
For he was surely lying.
(7) They told her how he drank a toast
To evil Eva Baylor;
And not a toast he drank to her,
Her lover, he had failed her.
(8) When he was dead and in his grave,
Her heart was filled with sorrow;
"Oh, Mother, Mother, take my head,
I die for him tomorrow."
(9) "Those evil tongues have lied to me,
And I believed a liar;
Upon my grave will grow a briar,
And on his grave a flower."