Kindly Barbara Allen
Jan. 16th, 2026 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI love a good lute song; but I really don't love some of the tropes, and a particularly pernicious and long-lasting one is the idea that a woman who doesn't return a man's affections (but never the other way round) is therefore "cruel". I also notice that d'Artagnan is inclined to avoid singing that kind of song, and good for him; there is one he sings called Faire, sweet, cruell, but that isn't in this category despite the title. The singer is addressing his existing sweetheart, who is teasing him by running away.
The trope is not by any means confined to lute songs. It's been around for centuries; many folk songs have it, and even the scene in The Mikado where Ko-Ko sings the Tit-Willow song explicitly contains it (though the song itself does so only implicitly, and I can cope with it and even find it funny because it's so clearly a made-up story combined with the appropriate level of ham acting). The message of the trope is clear. Ladies, if some man starts romancing you, you're supposed to manufacture artificial feelings for him (with which, apparently, he will be quite satisfied), or else you're "cruel" and you deserve everything you get. It doesn't matter what he's like, or even whether or not you're in any way compatible. You have to ignore all your own feelings, red flags, whatever else, in order to give him what he wants (or thinks he wants at this particular moment).
This is utter nonsense, of course, and runs totally contrary to both Scripture and common sense. The Song of Songs gives solemn warnings that one should "not arouse or awaken love until it so desires", which seems to me to be about the strongest possible warning you could have about trying to manufacture feelings. (I am very tempted here to go off into a full exegesis on the Song of Songs and how perfectly it makes sense on two completely different levels; but that is a side track, albeit a fascinating one.) It's true that we are also repeatedly commanded to love one another in Scripture, but not, and this is vital, in the romantic sense. You can decide to love someone non-romantically by simply setting yourself to act as though you did, and this will gradually make you feel warmer towards them even if you didn't feel like that before; but this simply doesn't work for romantic love, at least in most cases. (It can happen. Ttevye and his wife in Fiddler on the Roof managed it, and, while that is obviously a fictional example, it wouldn't have been written if it had been completely impossible. But I don't think it's especially common, and I suspect that many apparently successful arranged marriages in the past were primarily held together by the non-romantic kind of love.)
Anyway, there is one particular folk song which absolutely epitomises this trope, and it is called Barbara Allen. It also, while we're at it, contains the equally stupid trope that one can die of a broken heart. In this song, the young man (name variable, according to version, but it's "Jemmy Grove" in the one I know best) falls in love with the eponymous Barbara, who rejects him, so he takes to his bed to die. Barbara comes to visit him but still won't change her mind, so he does die. Barbara then does change her mind, mourns the fact that she was too late, and... you've guessed... also dies of a broken heart. It is the most stupid folk song ever, but it does have a beautiful tune.
So I rewrote it. Like you would. And this is what happens in my version.
It starts the same way, with the lovesick Jemmy taking to his bed and Barbara coming to visit him. But what then happens is she basically gives him a reality check and a pep talk, which amounts to "Don't be so silly. You will get over me, you will be fine, and eventually you will fall in love with someone else who will be the right person for you, which I'm not. Now get up and get on with life." Which he does; and when he eventually does find the true love of his life, he is thankful to "kindly Barbara Allen" for getting him back on track.
I like my version a lot better. Perhaps I need to do a bit more rewriting!
The trope is not by any means confined to lute songs. It's been around for centuries; many folk songs have it, and even the scene in The Mikado where Ko-Ko sings the Tit-Willow song explicitly contains it (though the song itself does so only implicitly, and I can cope with it and even find it funny because it's so clearly a made-up story combined with the appropriate level of ham acting). The message of the trope is clear. Ladies, if some man starts romancing you, you're supposed to manufacture artificial feelings for him (with which, apparently, he will be quite satisfied), or else you're "cruel" and you deserve everything you get. It doesn't matter what he's like, or even whether or not you're in any way compatible. You have to ignore all your own feelings, red flags, whatever else, in order to give him what he wants (or thinks he wants at this particular moment).
This is utter nonsense, of course, and runs totally contrary to both Scripture and common sense. The Song of Songs gives solemn warnings that one should "not arouse or awaken love until it so desires", which seems to me to be about the strongest possible warning you could have about trying to manufacture feelings. (I am very tempted here to go off into a full exegesis on the Song of Songs and how perfectly it makes sense on two completely different levels; but that is a side track, albeit a fascinating one.) It's true that we are also repeatedly commanded to love one another in Scripture, but not, and this is vital, in the romantic sense. You can decide to love someone non-romantically by simply setting yourself to act as though you did, and this will gradually make you feel warmer towards them even if you didn't feel like that before; but this simply doesn't work for romantic love, at least in most cases. (It can happen. Ttevye and his wife in Fiddler on the Roof managed it, and, while that is obviously a fictional example, it wouldn't have been written if it had been completely impossible. But I don't think it's especially common, and I suspect that many apparently successful arranged marriages in the past were primarily held together by the non-romantic kind of love.)
Anyway, there is one particular folk song which absolutely epitomises this trope, and it is called Barbara Allen. It also, while we're at it, contains the equally stupid trope that one can die of a broken heart. In this song, the young man (name variable, according to version, but it's "Jemmy Grove" in the one I know best) falls in love with the eponymous Barbara, who rejects him, so he takes to his bed to die. Barbara comes to visit him but still won't change her mind, so he does die. Barbara then does change her mind, mourns the fact that she was too late, and... you've guessed... also dies of a broken heart. It is the most stupid folk song ever, but it does have a beautiful tune.
So I rewrote it. Like you would. And this is what happens in my version.
It starts the same way, with the lovesick Jemmy taking to his bed and Barbara coming to visit him. But what then happens is she basically gives him a reality check and a pep talk, which amounts to "Don't be so silly. You will get over me, you will be fine, and eventually you will fall in love with someone else who will be the right person for you, which I'm not. Now get up and get on with life." Which he does; and when he eventually does find the true love of his life, he is thankful to "kindly Barbara Allen" for getting him back on track.
I like my version a lot better. Perhaps I need to do a bit more rewriting!
