TPB: Barbara Allen's Cruelty

[George Dance]

Today on The Penny Blog:
Barbara Allen's Cruelty

In Scarlet town where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’,
Made every youth cry, "Well-away!"
Her name was Barbara Allen.
[...]

http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2013/05/barbara-allens-cruelty.html

[Will Dockery]

Nice connection with the folk art tradition and the oral tradition of poetry, George. had a couple of friends who used to study all the variants of "Barbara *Ellen*" and so on, and it goes on almost endlessly.

As Dylan described it:

"...Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're not going to die."

From: http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/66-jan.htm

[George Dance]

On Monday, May 20, 2013 3:20:59 PM UTC-4, Will Dockery wrote:
> On Sunday, May 19, 2013 1:54:46 PM UTC-4, George Dance wrote:
>
> > Today on The Penny Blog:
> > Barbara Allen's Cruelty
>
> > In Scarlet town where I was born,
> > There was a fair maid dwellin’,
> > Made every youth cry, "Well-away!"
> > Her name was Barbara Allen.
> > [...]
>
> > http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2013/05/barbara-allens-cruelty.html
>
>
> Nice connection with the folk art tradition and the oral tradition of poetry, George. had a couple of friends who used to study all the variants of "Barbara *Ellen*" and so on, and it goes on almost endlessly.
>

Yeah, tell me about it. I first found the poem at the Poetry Foundation site, and worked back from there to Child, who had three different versions, none of them the same. This version is interesting in that it reads like a combination of all the others, even though it's the earliest one I came across (1765). There's a good chance that Thomas Percy wrote it from the various earlier versions he'd collected.

[Will Dockery]

On Monday, May 20, 2013 4:04:43 PM UTC-4, George Dance wrote:
> On Monday, May 20, 2013 3:20:59 PM UTC-4, Will Dockery wrote:
>
> > On Sunday, May 19, 2013 1:54:46 PM UTC-4, George Dance wrote:
>
> >
>
> > > Today on The Penny Blog:
>
> > > Barbara Allen's Cruelty
>
> >
>
> > > In Scarlet town where I was born,
>
> > > There was a fair maid dwellin’,
>
> > > Made every youth cry, "Well-away!"
>
> > > Her name was Barbara Allen.
>
> > > [...]
>
> >
>
> > > http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2013/05/barbara-allens-cruelty.html
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > Nice connection with the folk art tradition and the oral tradition of poetry, George. had a couple of friends who used to study all the variants of "Barbara *Ellen*" and so on, and it goes on almost endlessly.
>
> >
>
>
>
> Yeah, tell me about it. I first found the poem at the Poetry Foundation site, and worked back from there to Child, who had three different versions, none of them the same. This version is interesting in that it reads like a combination of all the others, even though it's the earliest one I came across (1765). There's a good chance that Thomas Percy wrote it from the various earlier versions he'd collected.

And continues to the present day!