Bonny Barbara Allen - analysis

Denotative analysis

-          The title

-          The title of this text is Bonny Barbara Allen (the ballad of). This suggest me this is a ballad. At the moment I don’t know anything about ballads, but I purpose it’s a form of a text or a poem connected to the world of music and dance. As you sing a song you dance (and sing) a ballad.

I guess the subject of the ballad is Barbara Allen. As I can read in my book “This ballad tells of a tragic story between John and Barbara, who loved each other but were united only after death”.

-          Structure

The text is a ballad. A ballad is a form of verse set to music so it rhymes and it was sung or recited. It is structured in eight quatrains. Barbara Allen is repeated five times as the end line of the stanza.

-          Textual typology

As I said before this poem is a ballad, more particularly a folk ballad. It is written in quatrains (four-line stanzas). Medieval ballads were commonly used to tell stories of outlaw, love, war, tragedies. The main topic of this ballad is tragic love.

-          The message of the text

To me this poem does not have a deep message. It’s similar to many other medieval poems. It aims to tell a story of love. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry, so they were easy to remember and full of refrains. The only message I get out from the text is that if you don’t want to suffer you must take advantage of any situation when it appends: John didn’t paid attention to Barbara advances, and now he’s sit to death; Barbara didn’t help John when he was lying in his bed, close to death, and now she suffer and feel guilty (and even suicide). Both died alone and suffering because they didn’t take their lover when they could do it, and now it’s late. You don’t need to take love for granted, or it might not be there when you want it.

“Out of Sweet William’s heart there grew a rose. Out of Barb’ry Allen's, a briar”. Barbara Allen is the worst, the cruel one, she didn’t satisfy John’s last desire, so she’s like a briar. But briar and rose are connected by love which put them together: so “The rose grows 'round the briar”. However love wins and now they’re together, in the grave.

-          Difficult words

Martinmas - St. Martin’s Day on November 11

Hooly - holy

Adieu - goodbye

Twa -  two

Jow - toll

 

 

Connotative analysis

-          Phonic analysis

This ballad is written to be sang so it has many rimes. Different words (like slowly or hooly) are repeated more than once, with a rhythmic cadence. These words are repeated for emphasis. “Barbara Allen” ends 5 out 8 stanzas and it is like a refrain. Dialect:  words such as “dinna”, “hooly”, and a “spilling” give the Scottish accent and make the dialogue more real that if it were translated into modern English. The entire event take place in Scotland.

-          Semantic analysis

There isn’t a regular rime scheme: it varies from different stanzas. As the poem is mainly a dialogue there are not a lot of figures of speech. The importance of Death (in the last three stanzas) gives sense to all the poem: it is Death who takes away Sir Graeme from his lover, and it is the Death-bell with its “jow” which makes Barbara feel pain and “woe”. Death is one of the protagonist of the poem.

-          Syntactic analysis

This poem is a ballad and in order to preserve accents, rhythm and cadence the order of words is not always correct. Particularly sentences order is eluded so every stanza ends with “Barbara Allen”. This elusion keep the musicality of the poem.

 

This ballad was sung, or recited, so the amount of refrains, dialectic words, repetitions and dialogue forms make it an “easy” poem. Ballads were transmitted orally so the listener should remember it easily. Folk ballads come from poor and popular poetry so they are made of an easy English. They were sung and the listeners of ballads were poor people. As other ballads it discusses unrequited love. The ballad contains no references to famous places, people, or art, probably since it was written so long ago and the author wasn’t so cultured to allude to political events or to kings, queens and wars. As I said this ballad is based on popular folk tradition. The story is simple, organized in one incident and full of dialogues.