The title is a name “Bonny Barbara Allen” and ‘Bonny’ and ‘Barbara’ made an assonance. When the reader sees the title immediately ask himself who that woman is, it also expects the poem presents a story of this character. The poem is made of 8 quatrein.                             

The first stanza introduces the setting: the reader understand it was autumn, indeed it’s a sad love story so the poet choose to set the ‘tale’ in a season that in the common opinion seems sad too. In this stanza (line 3-4) the poet introduces the content of the poem too: the love between John and Barbara.

From the second stanza the poet starts to narrate the ‘real’ story: John is on the deathbed, he is sick because of Barbara Allen; he send a men to the town to say to her to come before his death. He regrets to have made Barbara Allen angry with him and before dying he says ‘adieu’ to all his friends and advises her housekeeper to be kind with his love. While Barbara is arriving to John’s house the dead-bell ring, and she starts cry.

The whole poem isn’t made of rhyme, but the reader can find some: in the line 5 (down-town) and in the line 15 (me-be) the rhyme are inside the same line, the only rhyme between two different lines is in yhe third stanza (line 10-11-12, lying-by-dying). The poet in the 5^th stanza use an assonance between ‘ye mind’ and ‘young man’. In the 7^th stanza the reader can see an anaphora ‘and slowly, slowly’ to emphasize more than ever the slowly movements of her that remind of the slowness of an anguished death.

In the poem is recurring the use of the name ‘Barbara Allen’, the reader can read it as the last word of the last line of every stanza (except in the 4^th stanza where it is in the second line and in the 2^nd and 7^th stanza - indeed in these stanza there isn’t an intervention of John and the content of both is the death not seen from Barbara’s viewpoint like in the last stanza).  The reader in the line 23 can appreciate the use of word ‘adieu’ in the protagonist’s speech, that made it think and realize John is a noble because if he know some French words maybe he had studied it, and at the medieval times only rich and noble children have an education.

This poem highlights the tragic aspect of love: the difference between social classes was more important than the real love. There wasn’t a way to stay together alive, and John and Barbara are the example that only the death put us in the same social position: death is the only thing equal for everyone, so it is the only way to unite people who aren’t peers.