Bonny Barbara Allen

The title is “Bonny Barbara Allen”, probably a name ,the words ‘Bonny’ and ‘Barbara’ made an assonance. When the reader sees the title immediately ask himself who that woman is, and expects the poem may tell a story where Barbara Allen is the main character.

This poem is a ballad, is composed of 8 stanzas of 4 lines. The rhyme scheme is irregular.

The first stanza introduces the story, the reader understand it was autumn, the poet choose to set the ballad in a season that in the common opinion seems sad sad and dark too. In this stanza, the poet introduces the plot of the poem too, the love story between Sir John and Barbara Allen.

From the second stanza the poet starts to narrate the story: Sir John is dying, he is sick because of Barbara Allen; he send a men through the town warn her to come before his death.

The in the third stanza Barbara Allen and the narrator are speaking, she went to Sir John’ house and when she saw him she laugh at his condition saying “Young Man, I think you are dying”.

In the fourth stanza the reader can understand the reason why Sir John is ill. John and Barbara Allen are speaking, he tells her that he his sick because of her, Barbara used cruel words, she tell him that it would be betterif he died. The author ,through Barbara’s word, wants underlines how she feels, when she says “ Though your heart’s blood were a spilling”, he may uses that words to appeal reader attention. There is a repetition of word “Sick”.

In the fifth stanza there is a reported speech in line in line 17, so the is speaking, while in lines 18-19-20 Barbara tells the reasons why she is still angry with Sir John. She accuse john to spent his time in taverns drinking and playing with, then she says that she didn’t took care of himself. The stanza finished with a question, which has not answer.

In the sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas Sir john 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 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. 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.

The poem doesn’t present a regular rhyme scheme, 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 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.