On…Barbara Allen

 

 

One of the best known of all ballads is Child #84 (Roud 54), Barbara Allen. It is also known as “Bonny Barbara Allan,” “Sir John Grehme and Barbara Allan,” and “Barbara Allens’ Cruelty.” This ballad can be traced back at least three and a half centuries—Samuel Pepys writes in his diary on January second, 1666, that at a gathering Mrs. Knipp, an actress, sang the “little Scotch song of Barbary Allen.”

In the ballad a man, sometimes named Sir John Graeme, (and sometimes, Jemmy Grove) is dying. In some versions he’s dying for the love of Barbara Allen, in others, it’s of an undisclosed ailment. He sends for Barbara Allen who eventually arrives. In one version she’s angry at him for slighting her, in others she is simply unmoved by his condition. He turns his face to the wall, she leaves and he dies. Upon hearing of his death, Barbara Allen feels remorse for her treatment of him and in all but one version death takes her as well. (1)

Recently Barbara Allen has been sung by Bob Dylan, on the 2nd Gaslight Tape in late 1962, as well as Jean Ritchie, Shirley Collins, Joan Baez, and Pete Seeger.

 

1) Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol. 2. Mineola: Dover, 2003.