The article The Ballad of Barbara Allen has moved!
Check it out along with all our articles on how to play the mandolin, the Carter Family, traditional music and musicians on the updated Native Ground site with all our old aritcles (like this one) and new articles, videos, books and recordings.
In America, "Barbara Allen" was sometimes called "Barbara Allen's Cruelty or the Young Man s Tragedy." It was also known as "Barbara Ellen," and "Bonny Barbara Allan." In the beginning of the 19th century "Barbara Allen" was used both as a children’s game and as an instrumental at dance parties. In the mid eighteenth century the tune of "Barbara Allen" was also used for several religious texts. During the Civil War, it provided the melody of a song called "Brother Green," which told the last words of a dying soldier.
By the end of the 19th century, ballads such as "Barbara Allen" were all but forgotten in the British Isles where they originated. Just when these ballads were on the edge of oblivion, in walked an English folksong collector named Cecil Sharp. As early as 1910, Sharp combed America’s southern states from Georgia and North Carolina to Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. There he found a wealth of English ballads that had long been forgotten in his native land. He collected enough versions of "Barbara Allen" to fill sixteen pages of his book English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians.
Read the Full "Ballad of 'Barbara Allen'" on our updated website >
NOTE: Portions of this article are from Wayne
Erbsen's book, Log Cabin Pioneers, available from
us at Native Ground Music.
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