You are trivializing the ballad yourself, Neo. Certain themes are eternal. It is the treatment that counts, and the imagery employed.
Tristan and Isolde is an epic poem. Elizabethan poetry is just that -- poetry by recognized poets. Ballads are folk compositions, anonymous. I was comparing the lyrics not to "professional", "classical" poetry, but to rock music lyrics. (I could have used Frankie and Johnny,/i> or St. James Infirmary instead. But, here too, you might have considered the love/death subject matter "trite." What do rock lyricists write about? Aristotelian philosophy?)
As for Barbara Allen in particular, there are many, many versions of it. One of the oldest (the one in Quiller-Couch's anthology) does provides a rationale: Barbara was angry at William (called Jemmy Grove here)for dissing her in front of his friends.
"O dinna ye mind, young man," says she,
When the red wine you were fillin',
That ye made the healths go round and round,
And slighted Barbara Allen?"
I get the feeling that he might have been boasting about his conquest of Barbara Allen, because the final verse could be hinting at that:
"Farewell,"she said, "ye virgins all,
And shun the fault I fell in.
Henceforth, take warning by the fall
Of cruel Barbara Allen."
This particular version ends there; no rose, no briar, no churchyard. But that's the whole point of folk poetry/music: there IS no single "AUTHOR." Yet the group author of yore is usually a hundred times better at poetic technique than the rock lyricist of today. And poetic technique was what I was talking about. |
