Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

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	32b	OUR FAMILIAR SONGS.
	the gist of the words may be lost overboard, as a song floats down the stream of time; it that, poor Barbara appeared a monster indeed, as there is no mention of the fact, that the dying youth had formerly slighted her when the healths went round. Pepys, in his Diary, under date of January 2, 1665, speaks of Mrs. Knipp's (the actress's) singing, of "her little Scotch song of Barbary Allan, at Lord Brounker's," and ho adds, that he was " in perfect pleasure to hear her sing it." Goldsmith recounts more than once, his delight in the ballad. He says: "The music of the first singer is dissonance, to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears, with 'Johnny Armstrong's Good night;' or, 'The Cruelty of Barbara Allan.'" The song came over to our country, with the early settlers, and Horace Greeley, in his "Recollections of a Busy Life," speaks of remembering to have heard his mother sing, "Barbara Allan." The air is as old as the words, and the origin of both is unknown. Larghetto.