The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145423 Message #3364295
Posted By: Richie
16-Jun-12 - 04:22 PM
Thread Name: Origins: New Book of Maine Ballads released
Subject: RE: Origins: New Book of Maine Ballads released
Hi,
Without creating too much tread drift, here are two opinions on the Barry/Eckstorm theory about Barbara Allen:
Norm Cohen: It has been argued that the January 2 reference was not to the traditional ballad: in a head note to the ballad, editor Belden wrote, Mrs. [Fannie Hardy] Eckstorm in a letter written in 1940 informed me that she and [Phillips] Barry had satisfied themselves, before Barry's death, that as sung by Mrs. Knipp to the delight of Samuel Pepys in 1666 it was not a stage song at all but a libel on Barbara Villiers and her relations with Charles II; but so far as I know the details of their argument have never been published. [68]
The absence of said details in this case rather reminds one of mathematician Fermat's handwritten marginal comment in his copy of a number theory textbook that he had discovered a marvelous proof of the theorem under discussion, but the margin was too narrow to contain it. Without any record of Eckstorm and Barry's evidence (and contrariwise the suggestive evidence in the two correspondents' use of ballad characters as noms-de-plume), we must reluctantly consign their comments to the dustbin of dubious demonstrations and assume that Pepys indeed heard the ballad that we know by that name.
Ballad Index: Phillips Barry speculates that this is based on the lives of Barbara Villiers and King Charles II. This is characteristic of Barry: Clever but completely unconvincing. - RBW
Richie