Barbry Ellen- Keen (VA) pre1936 Scarborough B
[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.
Laura Keen, of Murphy's Hollow, Buchanan County, knew a different version, which she was rather shy about singing for me, as she called it "an old love song." She it was who said, "My husband. is all the time a-beggin'me to sing him old love songs when we're settin' by the fire at night, but I won't do it." I told her that in my opinion even the most modest of wives might sing this to her husband when urged to do so. she held that the girl's given name was Barbry Ellen, but she didn't know her last name.
(B) BARBRY ELLEN- Sung by Laura Keen, of Murphy's Hollow, Buchanan County
It was all in the month of May
When the red-buds they were swe1ling,
He sent his servant John to town
For the wants of Barbry Ellen.
Sweet William sent for you to come down
That Your name be Barbry Ellen;
She dressed herself in haste for to go
And hated to deny him.
The very first words when she got there,
Young man, I believe you're dying.
Oh, yes, I'm sick and mighty sick
And death it is a-dwelling.
No better, no better will I ever be
If I don't get Barbry Ellen.
Oh, yes, you're sick and mighty sick
And death it is a dwelling.
No better, no better will you ever be
Because you can't get Barbry Ellen.
He turned his pale face to the wall
His back upon the army[1].
Adieu, adieu to the ladies all around,
Be kind to Barbry Ellen.
She fell up against his bed-side
A-screaming and a-crying.
I might have saved this young man's life
If I only had been a-trying.
She had not got more than one mile to town
Till she heard them death bells ringing.
They ring so clear they seemed for to say
Hard-hearted Barbry Ellen.
She had not got more than two mile to town
Till she saw the pale corpse coming.
Lie down, lie down, you pale corpse you,
Let me take my last look upon you.
They tuck them both to the Van Cathellic[2] church
And buried them side by side,
A rose growed on Sweet William's breast,
And a brier on Barbry Ellen's.
They growed as high as the van Catholic church
And could not grow any higher.
They tangled all round in a true lover's knot
And no one could untie them.
1. ?
2. Not sure why the spelling is different here.