In the first quarter of the century, this celebrated ballad was still used in New England as a children's game or dance at evening parties. We have here, perhaps, the latest English survival, in cultivated society, of a practice which had once been universal. It is noteworthy that while, in the town of which we speak,[69] the establishment, at the period alluded to, of a children's dancing-school was bitterly opposed, and the children of "church members" were hardly permitted to attend, no such prohibition applied to amusements like this, which were shared in irrespective of sectarian prejudice, by boys as well as by girls. Our informant describes the performers as standing in couples, consisting each of a boy and a girl, facing each other. An elderly lady, who was in particular request at children's parties on account of her extensive stock of lore of the sort, sang the ballad, to which the dancers kept time with a slow metrical movement, balancing without any considerable change of place. At the final words, "Barbara Allen," which end every stanza, a courtesy took the place of the usual refrain. The whole performance is described as exceedingly pretty, stately, and decorous. It cannot be doubted that the version of the ballad sung was traditional, but we have not been able to secure it. FOOTNOTES: [53] The song exhibits numerous marks of antiquity. "Picks up a pin" was originally, no doubt, "pulls at the pin." The word "garret" here appears to correspond to the Scandinavian "high-loft," the upper part and living-room of an ancient house. The third verse is a very ancient ballad commonplace-- Shee's as soft as any silk, And as white as any milk. "Ballad of Kinge Adler," in the Percy MS. Instead of "Water, water, wild-flowers," as printed on the next page, we find in Philadelphia, "_Lily, lily, white-flower_," which may have been the original, and reminds us of the refrains of certain ballads. In Yorkshire, England, "_Willy, willy, wall-flower_." A specimen of the quintessence of absurdity is the following street-song: Swallow, swallow, weeping About a willow tree, All the boys in Fiftieth Street Are dying down below; Excepting ---- ---- His love he can't deny, For he loves ---- ---- And she loves him beside, etc. Notwithstanding the vulgarity of these stanzas, and of others which are employed for the same purpose, the practice which they illustrate--namely, the adaptation of a ballad to the dance by uniting with it a game-rhyme--is no doubt ancient. We have other examples in the numbers which follow. [54] "Lines told to Lydia Jackson (now Mrs. R. W. Emerson, of Concord, Mass.) by her aunt, Joanna Cotton, in 1806-7-8, in Plymouth."