Barbara Allen- Sharp (SC) 1928 Reed Smith B
[No date given. Reed Smith; South Carolina Ballads, 1928. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
BONNY BARBARA ALLEN
(Child, No. 84)
OF all the ballads in America "Barbara Allen" leads both in number of versions, number of tunes, and in geographical distribution. It is found all over the United states. As in the case of "Lord Lovel," its wide American popularity is not due entirely to oral tradition, but in certain measure to print. This ballad has appeared in ten song books and several broadsides. See A. H. Tolman, "Some Songs Traditional in the United States," JAFL,vol. XXIX, p. 60, note 2; and G.L. Kittredge, "Ballads and songs," JAFL, 101 XXX, p. 317. It was first published in America in the American Songster, Baltimore, 1836, and next in the southern Warbler, Charleston, 1845. Recently, it was included in Heart songs, Boston, 1909. This collection of old favorites was the result of a contest in musical popularity conducted by the National Magazine, and is described as "contributed by 25,000 people."
The tunes "Barbara Allen" is sung to are as varied as is texts. Six different airs are recorded from New England, and many from all the southern states differing not only from each other, but from the scotch melody in Thomson's Select Melodies of Scotland, 1822, and the English air in Duncan's The Minstrelsy of England, 1905. The two South Carolina melodies printed below are entirely different, as are the tunes in Heart Songs and in Campbell and Sharp.
"Bonny Barbara Allen" was first printed in England in The Tea-Table Miscellany, 1740, and next in Percy's Religues, 1765. The same year 1765, Goldsmith wrote in his third essay: "The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with 'Johnnie Armstrong's Last Goodnight,' or '"The cruelty of Barbara Allen.' " It was, however, known at least a hundred years earlier. Percy makes the following reference to it in his Diary under the date of January 2, 1666; "In perfect pleasure I was to hear her [Mrs. Knipp, an actress] sing, and especially her little Scotch song of 'Barbara Allen.' There is no way of telling how much earlier the song was composed, for of course neither the first appearance of a ballad in print nor the first published contemporary reference to it has any necessary relation to its age. A ballad may be current in oral tradition several hundred years before it gets into print. or, for that matter, it may arise, flourish, and die out without being recorded in writing at all, and thus disappear without leaving a trace of its ever having existed.
Campbell and Sharp give ten texts and ten tunes, and Cox gives nine full texts and describes three others. Sharp gives a good text and tune and speaks of the ballad's English prevalence as follows, "There is no ballad that country singers are more fond of than of 'Barbara Ellen,' or 'Barborous Ellen' or, or 'Edelin,' as it is usually called. I have taken down as many as twenty-seven variants." For other English references, see Sharp, Notes, p. xx; and for American references, Cox's headnotes, p. 96
B. "Barbara Allen." Communicated by Miss Martha M. Davis, of the Winthrop College faculty, Rock Hill, S. C. She obtained it from one of her students, Miss Elizabeth Sharp, of Leslie, S. C., in whose family both text and tune are traditional.
It was upon a high, high hill
Two maidens chose their dwelling;
And one was known both far and wide,
Was known as Barbara Allen.
'T was in the merry month of May,
All the flowers blooming,
A young man on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.
He sent a servant unto her
In the town where she was dwelling.
"Come, miss, O miss, to my master dying
If your name be Barbara Allen."
Slowly, slowly she got up,
And to his bedside going,
She drew the curtain to one side,
And said, " Young man you're dying."
He stretched one pale hand to her
As though he would to touch her.
She hopped and skipped across the floor.
"Young man," says, "I won't have you.
"Remember, 'member in the town,
'T was in the tavern drinking,
You drank a health to the ladies all
But you slighted Barbara Allen."
He turned his face toward the wall,
His back upon his darling.
"I know I shall see you no more,
So goodbye, Barbara Allen."
As she was going to her home,
She heard the church bell tolling.
She looked to the east and looked to the west
And saw the corpse a-coming.
"O hand me down that corpse of clay
That I may look upon it.
I might have saved that young man's life,
If I had done my duty.
"O Mother, Mother, make my bed;
O make it long and narrow.
Sweet William died for me today,
I shall die for him tomorrow."
Sweet William died on a Saturday night,
And Barbara Allen on a Sunday.
The old lady died for the love of them both,
She died on Easter morning.
Sweet William was buried in one graveyard,
Barbara Allen in another;
A rose grew on Sweet William's grave
And a brier on Barbara Allen's.
They grew and they grew to the steeple top,
And there they grew no higher;
And there they tied in a truelover knot,
The rose clung round the brier.