Barbara Ellen- Chandler (MO) 1862 Belden K
[From Belden: Ballads and Songs 1940. His notes follow. Bronson 159.
R. Matteson 2015]
Barbara Allen
(Child 84)
Whether originally a stage song (as might be conjectured from Pepys's entry of January, 1666) or not, Barbara Allen, has become, and remains, the most widely known and sung of all the ballads admitted by Child to his collection. Its persistence in print-broadside, stall, and songbook-down to the present might be looked upon as cause or as effect of its popularity; probably it is both. At least it is probable that most of the marks of its form in recent reports are due to printed versions. Child had a number of American texts but considered none of them worthy of mention. He knew too of versions in which the rover makes bequests to Barbara, but considered them base matter, not fit for preservation. It might be convenient to list some of the features by which modern texts are distinguished. One is the time of year. In most texts, including child B, a seventeenth century English broadside, it is the merry month of May, when green buds they are swelling, or all equivalent; in others it is Martinmas, when the leaves are falling (Child A, Ord, LL, one of the Maine and one of the Nova Scotia texts, and six from the Southern states). The bequests, not found in any of the texts admitted to Child's canon, appear in LL, Ord, texts from Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Newfoundland, but infrequently in the United States and not at all in Missouri. The taunt about leaving her out in the drinking of healths, found in Child A, Ord, and a Hampshire text, is almost unfailing in American copies; and so is the rose and briar ending, which does not appear in the Child versions. On the whole, however, the texts recently recorded are so much alike that it does not seem necessary to reproduce here all the copies in the Missouri collection. six of them were printed in JAFL XIX.
K. 'Barbara Ellen.' Taken down by Miss Colquitt Newell from the singing of Mrs. Chandler of Farmington, St. Francois County, in 1912. 'She learned it as a child about fifty years ago from her mother, who in turn learned it as a child from an aunt. They had never seen it in print,' writes Miss Newell.
All in the early month of May,
When the green buds they were swelling,
Sweet William on his death-bed lay
For the love of Barbara Ellen.
He sent his servant to the town,
To the town where she was dwelling:
'My master's sick and sent for you,
If your name be Barbara Ellen.'
Then slowly, slowly she rose up,
And she did come a-nigh him,
And all she said when she got there
Was, 'Young man, I think you're dying.'
'It's true I'm sick, and very sick,
And death lies in my dwelling;
And I do know that I will die
If I don't get Barbara Ellen.'
'It's true you're sick, and very sick,
And death lies in your dwelling;
But don't you remember when the cup went round
And slighted Barbara Ellen ?'
Then slowly, slowly she rose up
And slowly she did leave him;
She sighing said she could not stay
Since the breath of life had left him.
He turned his pale face to the wall,
And he began a-crying,--
'And I do know that I will die
If I don't get Barbara Ellen.'
Sweet William died on Saturday night,
And Barbara died on Sunday.
Her mother died for the love of both-
She died on Easter Monday.
Sweet William was buried in the high church yard
And Barbara was buried in the squier;[1]
And out of his heart there grew a red rose,
And out of hers a briar.
They grew till they tied in a true love's knot
This red rose and this briar;
They grew till they tied in a true love's knot
For all true lovers to admire.
1. choir