Barbara Allen- P. Morris (VA) c1936 Scarborough C
[Dorothy Scarborough, A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains, 1937. All version are pre-1936, the year Scarborough died. Bronson dates her ballads, c. 1931. Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
BONNY BARBARA ALLEN
(Child No. 84)
Of all the ballads brought over from Britain and handed down by oral transmission in America, none is more popular than "Barbara Allen." Pepys has recorded his delight in hearing Mrs. Knipp, an actress, sing it in 1666. " In perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen." Goldsmith wrote that he was moved by it- "The music of the finest singers is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night, or The cruelty of Barbara Allen!" It is preserved in Percy's Reliques and in many another collection, and Arthur Kyte Davis reports ninety-two items of it from Virginia, some of them fragmentary and repetitious, with a dozen melodies, none of them identical with others, though similar to them.
In general, the tune is found in many variants, the details are different, but the tragedy of love and death remains the same in its essentials and (when the right singer sings it) has power to touch the heart now as three centuries ago. The name of the luckless lover varies, but that of Barbara Allen remains constant, save for spelling. Albert J. Beveridge says that this was one of the songs sung by Abraham Lincoln as a boy in Indiana.
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Another Virginia contribution is from Polly Morris, of yellow Branch, Pirkey, who had it in her ballet box. It is one of the rare items that record any reason for Barbara's cruelty.
(C) BARBARA ALLEN- from Polly Morris, of Yellow Branch, Pirkey
In Scarlet town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwelling,
And every youth cried Well away,
And her name was Barbara Allen.
All in the month of merry May
When green buds were a-swelling,
Young Jimmie on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
He sent his man unto her then
To the town where she did dwell in,
Saying you ride to my master
If your name be Barbara Allen.
For death is printed on his face
And over his heart is stealing.
So haste a\May to comfort him,
Oh, you lonely Barbara Allen.
Slowly, slowly she rose up
And slowly she came nigh him.
And all she said when there she came,
Young man, I think you're dying.
Recollect, recollect, recollect, young man
When I boarded at your tavern
You drank, you walked.with the ladies round
And you slighted Barbara Allen.
Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes,
When you boarded at my tavern,
I made the health go round and round,
My love to Barbara Allen.
He turned his face unto her then,
With deadly sorrow sighing,
Saying, Come, pretty maid and pity me,
For I'm on my death bed lying.
If you on your death bed lie
What need the tale you're telling?
No better will you ever be,
For your bonnie Barbara Allen.
As she was cruising over the field
She heard the death bell knelling,
And every stroke did seem to say,
Unworthy Barbara Allen.
She turned her body round about,
She spied his corpse a-coming.
Lay down, lay down the man, she said,
And let me gaze upon him.
With a sorrowful eye she looked down,
Her cheeks with laughter swelling,
While the neighbors cried all in a moan,
Unworthy Barbara Allen.
When he was dead and in his grave
She was stricken down with sorrow.
Mother, mother, make my bed,
For I shall die tomorrow.
Mother, mother, go dig my grave,
And dig it long and narrow.
Young Jimmy has died for me today.
I'll die for him tomorrow.
When she on her death bed lay
She begged to be buried by him,
And sorrowful repented of the day
She ever did deny him.
Fare well, she said, ye virgins all,
And shun the fate I fell in.
Henceforth take warning by the fate
Of cruel Barbara Allen.
Young Jimmie was buried in one church yard
And Barbara in another,
And out of her grave sprung a rose
And out of his a brier.
They grew and grew to the church top
Until they could grow no higher,
They locked and tied in a true love's knot
The rose and the briar.