BONNY BARBARA ALLEN

The title let me think that the ballad tells an important event which Bonny Barbara Allen had done. So I expect that the story tells about the story of Bonny Barbara Allen and the contest of the story, moreover I expect also an interaction with other characters.

It is made of  eight quatrains(verses of four lines). In the first quatrain he introduces the situation, clarifying the time and the place where the story is located. The text displays a mixture of dialogue and narration and a consistent repetition of words or lines. The narrative consists of series of rapid flashes. The themes, like other ballads, are love, war, domestic tragedy and outlawry with a general supernatural narrative.

The text displays the use of many figures of speech. Indeed we can see the use of many repetitions(like in verses 9,13 and 19), we can also see an enjambment in the verse 5, indeed the line ends in the middle of a phrase and it continues to the next line. In addition, the text displays the use of allitterations, the repetition of same initial consonant sound in words which are close together, like in the verse 5(trough the town).