Barbara Allen earliest version?

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 02:15 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_PoPY-mDpA

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: The Sandman
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 02:14 PM

Samuel Pepys in his "Diary" under the date of January 2nd 1665,
speaks of the singing of "Barbara Allen.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_PoPY-mDpA

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Margaret
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 01:01 PM

"Does anyone know the earliest recorded (i.e. written down in notation) tune to Barbara Allen, preferably 17th century? If not 17th century, do any 18th century tunes to it survive that you can point me towards?"

Have you checked Bronson?

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Stower
Date: 17 Oct 11 - 03:24 AM

All very interesting, but does anyone know the answer to the actual question, which is:

Does anyone know the earliest recorded (i.e. written down in notation) tune to Barbara Allen, preferably 17th century? If not 17th century, do any 18th century tunes to it survive that you can point me towards?

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Gene
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 10:25 PM

I have heard many versions, but the one I like BEST is by:

Tommy Faile, who wrote Phantom 309 that Red Sovine Recorded.

What a beautiful voice Tommy has..

Gene

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Goose Gander
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 10:03 PM

The broadside linked by Stower reads, "To the tune of Barbara Allen," which suggests an earlier version was reasonably well-known.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,SteveG
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 09:49 AM

I like the idea of Barbara Villiers being our girl. 2 folk songs still on the go today are about George (her brother?) Dido Bendigo and Swarthfell Rocks, both evolved from The Duke's Hunt, the duke being George Villiers and the hunt being The Bilsdale, England's oldest hunt.

However my own theory is that Mrs Knipp's pretty Scotch song was the version that starts 'It was in and about the Martinmas time' and I agree with Malcolm probably the original. The Scarlet/Reading town version I think was a later burlesque on this, and as Malcolm said, all part of the London luvvies scene.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 05:43 AM

My grandfather used to sing this, with the opening line "In Radmore Town, where I was born". I have always assumed that this was originally "Reading Town".

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Stower
Date: 16 Oct 11 - 05:16 AM

I have revived this thread as I am looking for the earliest possible tune of Barbara Allen, as I would be so delighted to find an early tune to sing to this broadside called Barbara Allen's Cruelty. It's dated 1675-1696 (Roxburghe collection 2.25) and is certainly the earliest I have come across. It fits the best known tune for this (thanks to the Everley Brothers), but that doesn't mean it was sung to it, of course. I'd be very grateful indeed if anyone could illuminate. Sometimes songs of this vintage have their tunes in lute manuscripts of the period, but not this one.

Stower

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Liberty Boy
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 11:35 AM

An interesting theory as to the identity of Barb'ry Ellen comes from Phillips Barry and Fanny Eckstorm the scholarly folksong collectors of Maine in the US who suggested that it was a libel on Barbara Villiers one of King Charles II's mistresses.
There is neither corroboration nor contradiction of this theory, but, certain pieces of evidence are interesting in suggesting that Scarlet Town the setting of some of the versions was colloquial slang for Reading in Berkshire, where Mrs Villiers received a large house from Charles.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Paul Slade
Date: 06 Aug 10 - 05:30 AM

I've got a printed copy of Barbara Allen's verses from the British Library collection, which would have been sold on the streets of York in the 19th Century. It's not dated, but comes from a collection spanning the years 1780-1867 and was issued by a York printer called J Kendrew. Pepys is known to have collected printed ballads sheets like these.

The full title given here is The Life Death and Love of Barbara Allen, the verses name her dead admirer as Johnny, and the penultimate verse breaks the ballad's third-person narration to let Barbara speak for herself: "Hard-hearted creature sure was I / To one that loved me dearly / I wish I had more kinder been been / In time of life when he was near me."

For more on the ballad-seller's trade, click here .

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,David W.
Date: 05 Aug 10 - 09:32 PM

The Art Garfunkel rendition has an instrumental interlude near its end that I recognize having been used in a movie scene. Can anyone recall the film it was used in?

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 06 - 04:00 PM

How completely bizarre, Barbary. Are you practicing the Barbary Coast? Or, perhaps, High Barbary?

A

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Barbary Allen
Date: 04 Sep 06 - 03:12 PM

I am Barbara Ellen. This song parallels my life in a few ways. I am a scholar and sonstress. I want to understand the curse of my accidental namesake.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Barbary Allen
Date: 04 Sep 06 - 03:10 PM

My name is Barbara Ellen. I am a scholar and a musician, and can tell you the meaning and the translation.
True True Irie. Times they have been a changing though.
I have not died this time around but am still single, a caveat hangs upon me head. I cannot see myself to the way of love perhaps a bit like Barbary....still. This time around more than a few men will die, who love me during me life. It is not my fault though.

You see it has not much to do with Barbara but with circumstance. A multitude of other circumstance are overlooked as she refuses his love. One, she will not admonish being with a man who comes off so reckless, dancing and tressling with the dames.

Barbary is the victim here, her pretty flowering gets thorned for all of eternity, that other thorn may have come from the women who spent themselves on William, maybe, but not her....

Men always die for varying reasons, history tells us that... and she was lucky not to be with William, what he had may have been contagious.

Perhaps he not served her liquor out of love for her, as liquor would do her not any good...

...and he sent a messenger b/c she would have taken ill from his infectious disease.

I can tell you the circumstance for Peter, Steve, Robert...Andrew, Michael, Victor, Rommie, Brian...but William? Nope. The last William I dated was Billy from 4th grade. So I guess I ought to supect nothing but impending doom in the future...actually, life has been sooo complicated, that I will make special note to be on the lookout for William, so I can be extra nice to him...I am heartbreaker from way back, but I think that I always get my heart broken first.....in defense.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Jan 06 - 01:02 AM

The western "Barbry Allen" collected by Art Thieme is in thread 3850: Barbara Allen

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,John Lasher
Date: 07 Jan 06 - 11:51 PM

The tune was also quoted in the score composed by Bernard Herrmann for the RKO film "All That Money Can Buy" (aka "The Devil and Daniel Webster'). Herrmann also quotes "Springfield Mountain" elsewhere.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Dec 05 - 03:21 AM

In answer to Janine, later broadside editions quite often substituted "Reading" for the older "Scarlet". That doesn't tell us anything about the intentions of whoever wrote the original, of course.

You can see examples of both forms at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 10:41 PM

Thanks, Art...I sing it to Morgan often and he loves it, too.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 07:29 PM

from Del Bray in our hotel room across from the train station -- Cheyenne, Wyoming------1962...Mike Sideman and I had met him in the bar at the hotel... (first verse only---rest is in the DT)

Near Medicine Bow where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin'
Made all the boys ride saddle sore,
And her name was Barbara Allen...

Love,

Art

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 05:25 PM

Well, we know those dreadful Scotts didn't harmonize to it since they didn't learn harmony until a hundred years later!

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 05:10 PM

Y'know, Malcolm, as I was penning my post there was a wee needle in the back of my mind saying that somebody had shoved me about this before---suitably smacked----!

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Janine
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 02:47 PM

Are there any versions which start 'In Reading Town..'. I mean is Scarlet Town perhaps a pun for Reading?

Janine

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Ian P
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 11:15 AM

Thanks so far, folks. Malcolm's right: when I asked for the earliest *recorded* version, I meant recorded as in notated rather than as in cylinder or tape recordings.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 03:59 AM

And it goes on:
... so I got into the coach where Mrs. Knipp was and got her upon my knee (the coach being full) and played with her breasts and sung, and at last set her at her house and so good night.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 03:58 AM

2nd. Up by candlelight again, and wrote the greatest part of my business fair, and then to the office, and so home to dinner, and after dinner up and made an end of my fair writing it, and that being done, set two entering while to my Lord Bruncker's, and there find Sir J. Minnes and all his company, and Mr. Boreman and Mrs. Turner, but, above all, my dear Mrs. Knipp, with whom I sang, and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of "Barbary Allen;"...

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 03:31 AM

Pepys didn't hear it in Scotland, as I've told Boab before. He heard it in London, at Lord Brouncker's house, January 2 1666, sung by Mrs Knipp, an actress of whom he was rather fond. It was probably a stage song, and quite new at that time.

Pepys described it in his diary as a "little Scotch song" which, as William Chappell pointed out more than a century ago, was descriptive of style, not provenance; similar songs had been called, generically, "Northern" (for which, read "rustic") before the accession of the Stuart dynasty led to a change of fashion and terminology.

No broadside edition survives from Pepys' time; the earliest copies we have were printed in London. The song may have started out in England or Scotland; we don't know, though the former would seem more likely on the whole. I think that all this has been said in earlier discussions here (see list above).

I assume that Ian P meant "recorded" in the usual, broad sense and so was not asking about the earliest sound recording; but perhaps he would clarify that for us.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 02:22 AM

And we all know that you, Art, found the Cowboy's version in Cheyenne!! In Medicine Bow where I was born......still my fav. version!

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Dec 05 - 02:16 AM

The Traditional Ballad Index shows Vernon Dalhart in 1927, but the experts here probably know of earlier ones.
Ballad Search

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 11:33 PM

Wow, we missed it by a day!! January 2, 1666 is the day before our anniversary !

And that's the first I've ever heard about Pepys hearing it in Scotland. I've always thought he heard it in London---during the time of the Black Plague.

BUT I do seem to remember Nikita Khrushev, while giving a speech and banging his shoe on the desk at the United Nations, saying that "Barbara Allen" had first been heard by Pepys in Moscow !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 08:21 PM

Dunno when it was first recorded, but Pepys did mention having heard the song in Scotland. I first heard it sung in a folk venue by Nic Jones; the version beginning "In scarlet town". The version sung in Scotland opens with either "'Twas round about the Mart'nmas time" or "Round about the Lammas tide".

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 03:56 PM

at the top of the page, under 'quick links', you can find "Bruce Olson's web site", a scholarly study of old songs by a man who died a couple of years ag...now hosted on Mudcat

from this I found:

"In Scarlet Town where I was bound/ ZN1459| Barbara Allen's
Cruelty/ Tune: Barbara Allen's Cruelty/ Licensed according to
Order/ RB3 434 [two copies] = CR 675: BDBB [HH1 11, HC 652,
653] [CB p. 173. Child ballad ZC84|, Roud ZR54|. Cf. N1756,
N709. Pepys in his diary mentioned Mrs. Knipp's song of
"Barbery Allen" on Jan. 2 1666. This earliest copy is, however,
considerably later] "

I'm sure it was recorded early in the 20th century, as it was always popular....we will see what others have to say.

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Janine
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 02:16 PM

A really interesting version is that recorded by Moses 'Clear Rock' Platt in Sugarland (the prison farm), Texas in 1933. This was part of John Lomax's collection for the Library of Congress. He seems to combine it with a Streets of Larado/Unfortunate Rake series of verses. Same tune we sang at school too. But how did it arrive in Sugarland?

Janine

Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: Judge Mental
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 01:07 PM

She never recorded it, but my great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother -- give or take a great or two -- was singing it back around 1799.

The earliest version that I have in my collection is Bradley Kincaid's from the 1920s.

Subject: Barbara Allen earliest version?
From: GUEST,Ian P
Date: 07 Dec 05 - 12:30 PM

Yes, yes, I know this is likely to be either much disputed or perhaps impossible from the start but ... is there any evidence for an earliest or earliest known/earliest recorded version of Barbara Allen, either words, tune or both?