Barbery Allen- Flowers (MS) pre1936 Hudson L
[Two stanzas provided from Arthur Palmer Hudson's Folksongs of Mississippi, 1936. Hudson's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
BONNY BARBARA ALLEN
(Child, No. 84)
As is the case in other Southern states the balladry of which has been extensively gleaned, so in Mississippi this is the best known of the traditional English and Scottish ballads. The Mississippi collection made under my direction contains sixteen texts, and the number might easily have been doubled. All these are fairly complete; each has some distinctive feature or features.
Since the number of texts is so large, it is deemed permissible to omit from some of them stanzas practically identical with those given in full length texts and to reproduce only those stanzas of some texts that have interesting or significant variant details.
L. "Barbery Allen." Copied by Miss Allie Ward Billingsley, Winona, from the singing of Mrs. J. E. Flowers, her grandmother. Begins with the "May" stanza and has thirteen stanzas, of which the eighth is of interest because, like D above (see note), it expresses Sweet William's answer to Barbara's charge that he had been discourteous to her in public while they were in the tavern:
7 "O William, O William, don't you remember
When you were in town drinking;
You drank your health to the ladies all
But slighted Barbery Allen?"
8 "O yes, O yes, I do remember
When I was in town drinking;
I drank my health to the ladies all,
My love to Barbery Allen."