Barbara Allen -- Anonymous

(Poem #548) Barbara Allen In Scarlet town, where I was born, There was a fair maid dwellin', Made every youth cry Well-a-day! Her name was Barbara Allen. All in the merry month of May, When the green buds they were swellin', Young Jemmy Grove on his death-bed lay, For love of Barbara Allen He sent his men down to her then, To the town where she was dwelling: "O haste and come to my master dear, Gin ye be Barbara Allen." So slowly, slowly rase she up, And slowly she came nigh him, And when she drew the curtains by-- "Young man, I think you're dyin'." "O it's I am sick and very very sick, And 'tis a' for Barbara Allen." -- "O the better for me ye'se never be, Tho your heart's blood were a-spillin'!. "O dinna ye mind, young man," said she, "When the red wine ye were fillin', That ye made the healths gae round and round, And slighted Barbara Allen?" He turned his face unto the wall, And death was with him dealin': "Adieu, adieu, my dear friends all, And be kind to Barbara Allen!" And slowly, slowly raise she up, And slowly, slowly left him, And sighing said she could not stay, Since death of life had reft him. As she was walkin o'er the fields She heard the dead-bell knellin', And every jow that the dead-bell geid, Cried, "Woe to Barbara Allen!" "O mother, mother, make my bed! O make it saft and narrow: My love has died for me today, I'll die for him to-morrow." "Farewell", she said, "ye virgins all, And shun the fault I fell in: Henceforward take warning by the fall Of cruel Barbara Allen." -- Anonymous

        (Child Ballad #84)

c. 17th Century, but at least a few centuries older in oral tradition.

A classic folk ballad - life and love, drama and death, with a strong dash
of moral judgement thrown in. (Perhaps the true contemporary heir to the
folk ballad is the soap opera!) The morality might seem slightly archaic
today, especially the very androcentric slant, but that shouldn't preclude
enjoyment of the poem.

I've been planning to run a Child ballad for a while, and today's was the
obvious choice, being a friend of my youth. I remember what mostly caught my
fancy back then was the sound of the poem, a combination of the dialect and
the rhythm; interestingly, I'd forgotten most of the poem completely, except
for the last two verses, and therefore remembered it as a poem about a woman
who scorned her true love, and then killed herself out of repentance.
Rediscovering[1] the fact that he had slighted her first was quite a
surprise.

[1] or perhaps just discovering - many versions leave that bit out, no doubt
to strengthen their 'moral'

On the Child Ballads:

 Francis Child's five-volume work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
 (1882-1898), is considered by many as the basis of traditional Anglo-Celtic
 folk music, as both the motifs like the popular characters like the
 mythical Tam Lin and the might have been real Robin Hood, and the actual
 songs still played by many a musician are contained within this work. And
 just as importantly, the Child Ballads are crucial to present day writers
 who use the old folk ballads.

 [...]

 So why is the English and Scottish Popular Ballads so valuable? First we
 need a definition of what a ballad is. Funk & Wagnall's Online Dictionary
 defines a ballad thus: "short narrative folk song that fixes on the most
 dramatic part of a story, moving to its conclusion by means of dialogue and
 a series of incidents. The word ballad was first used in a general sense to
 mean a simple short poem. Such a poem could be narrative or lyric, sung or
 not sung, crude or polite, sentimental or satiric, religious or secular; it
 was vaguely associated with dance. The word is still commonly used in this
 loose fashion. In the field of folklore, however, ballad is applied
 specifically to the kind of narrative folk song described in the opening
 lines. These narrative songs represent a type of literature and music that
 developed across Europe in the late Middle Ages. Unlike the medieval
 romances and rhymed tales, ballads tend to have a tight dramatic structure
 that sometimes omits all preliminary material, all exposition and
 description, even all motivation, to focus on the climactic scene (as in
 the British "Lord Randall"). It is as though the ballad presented only the
 last act of a play, leaving the listener or reader to supply the antecedent
 material. When the ballad emerged, it was a new form of art and literature,
 distinct from anything that had gone before."

 [...]

 Child's contribution in researching, compiling, and publishing the English
 and Scottish Popular Ballads, was that he documented the very roots of
 English speaking ballads as versionthey still existed in the late Victorian
 period. This -- and its effects on popular folk music and written
 literature -- is why the Child Ballads (as they are most often called)
 remain a seminal work.

        -- [broken link] http://www.greenmanreview.com/child_ballads.html

 Follow the link and read the whole piece - it's well worth a look.

Links:

Some other versions of the lyrics ('Barbara Allen', like most ballads, has
no 'definitive' text)
  - http://ingeb.org/songs/barbaraa.html
  - [broken link] http://www.contemplator.com/folk2/brballen.html

Both links contain MIDI files of the melody

Bob Blair draws an interesting parallel between ballads and urban legends:
  - http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/000224.htm

An excellent page on folk music:
  - http://www.contemplator.com/history/epedia.html#child

The complete catalogue of Child ballads:
  - http://www.contemplator.com/child/cmpltchl.html

The androcentricity reminds me of Goldsmith's 'When Lovely Woman Stoops to
Folly':
  - http://www.bartleby.com/106/138.html

-martin