“Barbara Allen”
Earth Abides“Barbara Allen” is an inherited song in the children’s repertoire, and its performance shows how cultural forms can outlast the experiences that once gave their words meaning. They sing it plaintively, though none of them has known unrequited love.
The Song in the Children’s Repertoire
The children sing together in unison, accompanied by the accordion’s standardized chords and bumping bass. Ish observes that they prefer simpler tunes and seem to care little about the words. In that setting, “Barbara Allen” is one familiar song among others: its plaintive quality survives even when its subject is unknown to its singers.
Sound Without Shared Experience
The gap between the song and the children’s lives is especially clear in Ish’s comparison between its emotional content and their experience. They can perform the song, but none has known the unrequited love it evokes. The old repertoire therefore remains available as melody and communal activity while its meanings are only partly accessible to a generation formed after the world that produced it. Their singing preserves the song, but not the personal history that would make its grief familiar.
