Barbara Allen- Makem (Ulster) 1960 Ritchie; Text from 1967 Topic recording;
[Makem's opening stanza is based on the "Scottish" version Child A:
Bonny Barbara Allan- Version A a. Child 84 Bonny Barbara Allen
a. The Tea-Table Miscellany, IV, 46, ed. 1740; here from the London edition of 1763, p. 343.
1 It was in and about the Martinmas time,
When the green leaves were a falling,
That Sir John Graeme, in the West Country,
Fell in love with Barbara Allan.
Sean O'Boyle in the sleeve notes to Sarah's monumental Topic album: Everyone knows the tragic story of young Jemmy Groves and Heard-Hearted Barbara Allen. One look through the list of texts and tunes given in Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians will show its widespread popularity. It is recorded in Shropshire Folklore (p 543), Folksongs of the Upper Thames (p 204), Folksongs from Somerset (no 22) and in Gavin Greig's Last Leaves (No. 32), in Mackenzies Ballads and Sea Songs of Nova Scotia (No. 9), in British Ballads from Maine, in Traditional Ballads of Virginia, and in Folksongs of the Kentucky Mountains, and elsewhere. In all, more than 200 variants of the ballad are known from printed sources and and recordings. This version from Keady, Co. Armagh is as good as any I have heard, and it differs from all of them in one remarkable respect. Most versions place the tragedy "in the merry month of May when the green buds they are swelling",
but Sarah's song has a more sombre and appropriate timing:
"Michael's Mass (Michaelmas) day being in the year,
When the green leaves they are falling,
When young Jemmy Grove from the North Countrie,
Fell in love with Barbara Allen."
The melody is in the Re Mode and has been used by Johnny Moynihan's Barbara Allen on the album "Selected Songs, Reels, and Jigs" by DeDanaan.]
BARBARA ALLEN- sung by Sarah Makem, 1960; Recorded by Jean Ritchie and George Pickow pre-1960. Folkways: As I Roved Out; Field Trip- Ireland. Text from the 1967 Topic recording:
Michaelmas day being in the year
When the green leaves they were falling
When young Jimmy Grove from the north country
Fell in love with Barbara Allen.
He sent his servants out one day
To see if she was coming,
"One word from you will bring me to,
If you be Barbara Allen."
"Get up, get up", her mama said,
"Get up and go and see him."
"Oh mama dear, do you not mind the time
That you told me how to slight him?"
"Get up, get up", her father said,
"Get up and go and see him."
"Oh father dear, do you not mind the time
That you told me how to shun him?"
Slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly she put on her
And slowly went to his bedside
And slowly looked upon him
"You're lying low, young man", she said
"And almost near a-dying."
"One word from you will bring me to,
If you be Barbara Allen."
"One word from me you never will get
Nor any young man breathing
For the better of me you never will be
If your heart's blood was a-spilling."
"Look at my bedfoot", he said
"And there you'll find them lying,
Bloody sheets and bloody shirts
I sweat for Barbara Allen."
"Look at my bedhead", he said
"And there you'll find it ticking,
My gold watch and my gold chain
I bestow to Barbara Allen."
As she went over her father's green
She heard the dead-bell ringing
And every chap the dead-bell gave
It was woe to Barbara Allen.
As she went over her father's hall
She saw the corpse a-coming,
"Lay down,lay down,old weary corpse
Till I get looking upon him."
They lifted the lid up off the corpse.
She bursted out with laughing.
And all his wearied friends around cried,
"Hard-hearted Barbara Allen."
As she went into her father's house,
"Make my bed long and narrow
For the dead-bell did ring for my true-love today,
It will ring for me tomorrow."
Out of one grave there grew a red rose
And out of the other a briar
But they both twisted into a true-lover's knot
And there remain forever.