22nd May 2020 - Barbara Allen

Steve Smith, via Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer, kindly sent me links to several May-related songs played and tabbed for dulcimer for the Western North Carolina Dulcimer Group.

The tune I have selected is a song most people will recognise - Barbara Allen.

https://wncdc.org/mp3/Barbara%20Allen%20-%203.%20Full.mp3 Steve Smith plays Barbara Allen on the dulcimer

https://wncdc.org/tab/Barbara%20Allen.pdf for the dulcimer tab

https://wncdc.org/lyrics/Barbara%20Allen.txt for the lyrics

Steve's tab is in 3/4 time, but I came across an interesting discussion of time signatures in relation to traditional music from my dear friend, and CMLE Play contributor, Vic Gammon. Vic has a fascinating talk  about the history and global spread of the song, Barbara Allen, but in this paper he (and Emily Portman) examine it's time signature:

Barbara Allen’ (Child 84; Roud 54) ‘“Barbara Allen” I always get sung to five-time,’ said Cecil Sharp of his Somerset collection. ‘Barbara Allen’ is an immensely popular song. Bertrand Bronson remarked that it has ‘shown a stronger will-to-live than perhaps any other ballad in the canon. It has been popular since the seventeenth century and its popularity shows every sign of continuing. The Roud index produces over a thousand hits for the ballad (although some of these are duplications). Bronson includes about two hundred tune versions in The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Of these, around twenty, or approximately 10 per cent, are in five-time.

(From "Five-Time in English Traditional Song" by Vic Gammon and Emily Portman published in the Folk Music Journal and available to download from academia.edu).