Ballads & Songs of Southern Michigan-songbook
A Collection of 200+ traditional songs & variations with commentaries including Lyrics & Sheet music
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*53
ARISE AND BAR THE DOOR-O
(Get up and Bar the Door, Child, No 275)
This text is similar to Child A, although Child's version has eleven stanzas and no refrain. Child (V, 96-99), however, says that Christie (II, 262) gives as a refrain "common in the north of Scotland from time immemorial,"
And the barring o' our door, weel, weel, weel' And the barring o' our door, weel I
Child B and C relate a similar story to that in A concerning John Blunt and his wife, and Child notes that many tales have a similar plot. For a text of the same length as this Michigan one and with a similar refrain see Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, pp. 318-321, text B. See also Davis, pp. 495-496, and Greig, pp. 216-218. For texts more like Child B see Combs, pp. 147-148; Cox, pp. 516-517; and Greenleaf and Mansfield, pp. 41-42.
The present version was sung m 1935 by Mrs. Frank Gamsby, Saranac; as a young girl she learned the song from her sister, who had heard a Scottish boy sing it.
It hap-pened a - boot the Mid - die - mas time, And a
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i It happened aboot the Middlemas time, And a gay time it was then O, |
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