Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales and Talk Page: 58
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FOLK TRAVELERS
Old and New World. It is also true that the song was known in
Restoration England, for it was remarked by Pepys and published
in a broadside at that time.
It is but conjecture that the ballad was composed in Scotland,
though the grounds are good. They consist of the Scotch claim to
national origination, the scarcity of challenge from the only source
whence it could come, i.e. England, the strong traditional belief
that "Barbara Allen" began as a romantic Border ballad, the occur-
rence of the Border name Graham, and - what appears to be the
only direct comment in existence - an unexplained remark by
W. Christie: "The scene of the story is supposed to have been at
Annan, in Dumfriesshire." To which may be added that the plenti-
ful survival of the old Scotch text in England and America, in con-
trast to the dearth of English and American models in Scotland,
while not exactly proving anything, certainly gives an impression
of Scotland as a center of radiation. True, there is the alternative
chance that the ballad might have been composed, as a broadside
or otherwise, in England early enough to have migrated slowly into
Scotland, absorbed Caledonian markings, then recrossed the border,
adorned with linguistic kilts and bagpipes, in time to be recognized
in London in 1666 as a Scotch song. This might have happened, but
it is more far-fetched and in the scales of probability rises on
the lighter side.
And it is outright guesswork, guided only by general principles,
that the ballad was made in the 16th or early 17th century by some
humble Scot with a local reputation as an out-of-the-way songster,
and that the story represents a romanticized and otherwise artistically
distorted version of an actual incident. As Phillips Barry once said
in support of this view, if Barbara Allen was not a real person, it
took genius to invent her. "No other woman in balladry stands out
so in the round, with incident, motive, and action all so consistently
sequent."
If the ballad originated in some fashion in Scotland, as there is
good reason to suppose, what subsequently happened to it in the
Old World is not difficult to reconstruct in rough outline. Within
several generations it spread, no one could guess through what
devious channels, over considerable areas of Scotland and England
and across the Irish Sea to Dublin. Inventive singers in some regions58
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Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales and Talk (Book)
This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains popular folklore of Texas and Mexico, including traveling anecdotes, folk ballads, folklore in natural history, as well as information about black and white magic, Western animals, and cattle brands. The index begins on page 259.
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Texas Folklore Society. Folk Travelers: Ballads, Tales and Talk, book, 1953; Dallas, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38314/m1/64/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.