His lady fair to see,
And for the words the queen had spoke
Young Waters he did die.
BARBARA ALLAN
The Text is from Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany (1763). It was not included in the first edition (1724-1727), nor until the ninth edition in 1740, when to the original three volumes there was added a fourth, in which this ballad appeared. There is also a Scotch version, Sir John Grehme and Barbara Allan. Percy printed both in the Reliques, vol. iii.
The Story of Barbara Allan’s scorn of her lover and subsequent regret has always been popular. Pepys records of Mrs. Knipp, ‘In perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen’ (January 2, 1665-6). Goldsmith’s words are equally well known: ‘The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when an old dairymaid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, or The Cruelty of Barbara Allen.’ The tune is excessively popular: it is given in Chappell’s English Song and Ballad Music.
BARBARA ALLAN
1.
It was in and about the Martinmas time,