Barbara Allen- Marlor (NC) 1936 Cowell LOC REC
[From: I’m On My Journey Home: New World Records 80549; Track 11- Barbara Allen; I. N. (Nick) Marlor, vocal. Recorded November, 1936, in Boyd’s Cave, North Carolina, by Sidney Robertson [Cowell]. Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song L54.
Liner notes (by Wolfe?) follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Nick Marlor's lengthy rendition is a fine example of a strong old-time mountain vocal style applied to a classic ballad. Marlor was from Madison County, North Carolina, in the Great Smoky Mountains, an area that folk singer and collector Bascom Lamar Lunsford called "the heart of folk music in the United States," and that even today maintains a strong tradition of old-time singing. Both the song and the performance are typical of the southern-Appalachian singing tradition.
Marlor's style is high-pitched, loud, and tense, and displays a variety of ornamental and dramatic devices that make his performance a tour de force of Southern-mountain techniques. One technique noticeable throughout the performance is feathering, defined by ethnomusicologist Judith McCulloh as "a sudden or forceful raising of the soft palate against the back wall
of the throat and/or a sudden closing of the glottis at the very end of a given note, generally accompanied by a rise in pitch." Marlor does this, for example, at the end of "blooming" in stanza 1 and at the end of "dwelling" in stanza 2. Feathering is characteristic of many traditional singers (for example Barry Sutterfield and Goldie Hamilton on this recording, as well as Almeda Riddle and Roscoe Holcomb) and was absorbed into the styles of many early country singers and of modern bluegrass singers like Lester Flatt.
In fact, Marlor's high, tense, loud style is suggestive of modern bluegrass singing (see New World Records NW 225, Hills and Home). Marlor sings his song in a very free meter, with many turns and irregular catches. For example, in stanza 1, when he repeats the line "Sweet William on his deathbed lay," he changes the emphasis of the line completely: the first time, he holds a note on the syllable "Will-"; the second time, he emphasizes the "-iam" syllable. Marlor uses vibrato to emphasize certain phrases, and this effect often seems related to dramatic qualities of the line: in stanza 1, for instance, the vibrato is most evident in his repetition of the words "deathbed lay," an appropriate place for melodramatic emphasis. Such use of tone allows the singer to highlight passages that he or his audience can respond strongly to.
The appeal of "Barbara Allen" has been as long lasting as that of any identifiable folk song. The ultimate source of the ballad is unknown, but as early as 1666 the English diarist Samuel Pepys was describing how in "perfect pleasure," he heard an actress sing "her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen." Printed versions in Scotland date from 1740, and by the early nineteenth century the song was being widely printed in cheap, popular American songsters and on innumerable broadside sheets. Though the basic plot remained pretty constant, different American variants added new details: in some versions Barbara curses her lover and thus brings about his death, in some he curses Barbara; in some Barbara blames her parents for the tragedy, and in some Barbara's mother dies with her. The motif of parental conflict, typical of versions found in the American Southeast and present in this one, is not found in the British versions. Nothing much happens in "Barbara Allen," and the heroine's motivations are often cloudy. Scholars have been puzzled why a song with a story line so slight should continue to exercise so much appeal. But the song does have sentiment and pathos, a hauntingly beautiful melody, and an inexorable, almost Greek-like movement toward the final tragedy.
Oh, don't you remember the month in May,
When golden flowers were blooming?
Sweet William on his deathbed lay, (repeat)
For the love of Barbary Allen. (repeat)
He sent his neighbor down to the town,
And sent him [to?] her dwelling;
"Oh, better never will I be
Till I get Barbary Allen."
"Oh, better never will you be,
For you'll never get Barbary Allen."
So slowly she got up her bed,
And slowly she went to him,
And all she said when she got there, (repeat)
"Young man, I think youíre a-dying." (repeat)
"Oh yes, I'm sick and mighty sick,
And feel very much like dying,
And better never will I be
Till I get Barbary Allen."
"Well to say, I will
I never be any better,
For you'll never get Barbary Allen."
He turned his deathbed plumb to the wall,
He busted out to crying,
"Adieu, adieu to the ladies all around, (repeat)
Be kind to Barbary Allen." (repeat)
Oh, don't you remember those long summer days,
When you'd went to the town a-drinking?
You drunk the health to the ladies all around, (repeat)
And slighted Barbary Allen. (repeat)
She had not got very far from the town,
Till she heard them death bells rattle;
She looked to the east, and she looked to the west,
Till she saw the corpse a-coming.
"Go set me down that gentle little lad,
And let me look upon him."
They motioned up to where she screamed,
For to think she was so hardhearted.
"O mother, O mother, O mother," she cried,
"You would not let me have him;
O mother, O mother, O mother," she cried,
"You would not let me have him.
"Go dig my grave in yon churchyard,
And dig his in another,
And on my breast lay a red rose bush,
And on his lay a green brier.
"And let them grow as high as the house,
Till they can't grow no higher,
And make them tie in a true love's knot, (repeat)
Both live and die together." (repeat)
The young man died a Saturday night,
And Barbary died on Sunday,
And the old woman died for the love of both, (repeat)
And she died on Easter Sunday. (repeat)