Barbara Allan (Style)

Contents: Introduction Poem Text Poem Summary Themes Historical Context Critical Overview Criticism Sources For Further Study

Style

“Barbara Allan” uses the standard ballad structure, an abcb quatrain (a four-line stanza with rhymes occurring at the end of lines two and four). The ballad stanza also typically alternates in meter, so that the first and third lines of each quatrain have four stresses, and the second and fourth lines have three stresses. “Barbara Allan” holds to this pattern, as is shown in the following example:

They grew to the top o’ the old church wall,
   Till they could grow no higher,
Until they tied a true love’s knot —
   The red rose and the brier.

The rhymes in this last stanza are “higher” and “brier,” and the metrical stresses follow the 4-3-4-3 quatrain pattern.