Barbare Ellen- DeWelse (VA) 1936 Scarborough E
[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.
No indication was made on the pronunciation of "Barbare."
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 Kyle 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.
* * * *
Ettamae Howard De Welse sang for me the version she had written down in the gift book for Clementine Douglass.
(E) BARBARE ALLEN- sung by Ettamae Howard De Welse, NC. Original spelling kept from the book.
'Twas early in the month of May
the flowers they were blooming
Sweet Willie Grey come from the east
come courting Barbare[1] Allen
He sent his waiting-boy out
With a message calling
My master's sick and sends for you
if your name be Barbare Allen.
Slowly slowly she got up
and slowly she went to see him
young man you're sick and you're very sick
and you look very much like dying.
Oh, yes I'm sick and I'm verry[1] sick
And I feel verry much like dying
But none no better will I ever be
till I get you Barbare Allen.
Young man you're sick and you're verry sick
you feel verry much like dying
but none no better will you ever be
for you'll never get Barbare Allen.
he turned his pale face toward the wall
he turned his back upon her
the verry last words that he ever said
was be kind to Barbare Allen.
as she rode her high way home
she heard his death bells ringing
they rang and rang and seemed to say
hard-hearted Barbare Allen.
she looked east she looked west
she saw his corpse a-coming
she cried out loud go bring him here
that I may gaze upon him.
oh, mother, oh, mother go dig my grave
go dig it long and narrow
Sweet Willie died for me today
I'll die for him tomorrow.
Sweet Willie lies in the new church yard
and Barbare Allen by him
up out of his grave sprong a little red rose
and out of her a Brier.
They grew and they grew in the old church yard
till they could grow no higher
they linked and locked in a true lover's knot
the rose clings to the Brier.
1. Barb-a-ray?
2. original spelling