The Book of Scottish Song/Barbara Allan

Barbara Allan.

[This beautiful and affecting little ballad is of great antiquity, but nothing is known of its history. Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe speaks of a tradition which places the scene of the story at Annan in Dumfriesshire. We are more willing to believe, however, that it belongs to "the west countrie." We have often, at least, heard the song sung, in days long gone past, by ancient crone to listening children, over a winter fireside, and the understanding always was that the catastrophe which it records—(and surely a love-tragedy was never told in fewer, more impressive, or more significant words)—took place in the west. Bishop Percy, in his Ancient Ballads and Songs, (1769,) gives an extended version of "Barbara Allan," in which Barbara is made to reside "at Scarlet town," and the hero goes by the unheroic name of "Jemmye Grove," but the whole seems a fabrication on the old Scottish set. We here give the song as it appears in the fourth volume of Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany.]

It was in and about the Martinmas time,
⁠When the green leaves were a-fallin',
That Sir John Graham, in the west countrie,
⁠Fell in love wi' Barbara Allan.

He sent his man down through the town,
⁠To the place where she was dwallin'.
O, haste and come to my master dear,
⁠Gin ye be Barbara Allan.

O, hooly, hooly, rase she up
⁠To the place where he was lyin',
And when she drew the curtain by,
⁠Young man, I think ye're dyin'.

It's oh, I'm sick, I'm very very sick,
⁠And it's a' for Barbara Allan.
O, the better for me ye'se never be,
⁠Though your heart's blude were a-spillin'.

Oh, dinna ye mind, young man, she said,
⁠When ye was in the tavern a-drinkin',
That ye made the healths gae round and round,
⁠And slichtit Barbara Allan?

He turn'd his face unto the wa',
⁠And death was with him dealin:
Adieu, adieu, my dear friends a',
⁠And be kind to Barbara Allan.

And slowly, slowly rase she up,
⁠And slowly, slowly left him,
And sighin', said, she could not stay,
⁠Since death of life had reft him.

She hadna gane a mile but twa,
⁠When she heard the deid-bell ringin',
And every jow that the deid-bell gied,
⁠It cried, Woe to Barbara Allan.

Oh, mother, mother, mak' my bed,
⁠And mak' it saft and narrow;
Since my love died for me to-day,
⁠I'll die for him to-morrow.

---