John Barleycorn is a British folksong (Roud 164). The character of John Barleycorn in the song is a personification of the important cereal crop barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it, beer and whisky. In the song, John Barleycorn is represented as suffering attacks, death and indignities that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting.
Video John Barleycorn
Origins
Kathleen Herbert draws a link between the mythical figure Beowa (a figure stemming from Anglo-Saxon paganism that appears in early Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies whose name means "barley") and the figure of John Barleycorn. Herbert says that Beowa and Barleycorn are one and the same, noting that the folksong details the suffering, death, and resurrection of Barleycorn, yet also celebrates the "reviving effects of drinking his blood."
In their notes to the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (London, 1959), editors A L Lloyd and Ralph Vaughan Williams ponder whether the ballad is "an unusually coherent folklore survival" or "the creation of an antiquarian revivalist, which has passed into popular currency and become 'folklorised'". It is in any case, they note, "an old song", with printed versions dating as far back as the sixteenth century.
Maps John Barleycorn
Versions and variants
Countless versions of this song exist. A Scottish poem with a similar theme, "Quhy Sowld Nocht Allane Honorit Be", is included in the Bannatyne Manuscript of 1568 and English broadside versions from the 17th century are common. Robert Burns published his own version in 1782, and modern versions abound. Burns's version makes the tale somewhat mysterious and, although not the original, it became the model for most subsequent versions of the ballad.
Burns's version begins:
An early English version runs thus:
Earlier versions resemble Burns's only in personifying the barley, and sometimes in having the barley be foully treated or murdered by various artisans. Burns' version, however, omits their motives. In an early seventeenth century version, the mysterious kings of Burns's version were in fact ordinary men laid low by drink, who sought their revenge on John Barleycorn for that offence:
Another early version features John Barleycorn's revenge on the miller:
Recordings and modern performances
Many versions of the song have been recorded, including a very popular version by the rock group Traffic, appearing on their 1970 album John Barleycorn Must Die. The song has also been recorded by Fire + Ice, Gae Bolg, Bert Jansch, the John Renbourn Group, Pentangle, Finest Kind, Martin Carthy, Roy Bailey, Martyn Bates in collaboration with Max Eastley, the Watersons, Steeleye Span, Jethro Tull, Joe Walsh, Steve Winwood, Fairport Convention, the Minstrels of Mayhem, Galley Beggar, Donnybrook Fair, Oysterband, Frank Black, Chris Wood, Quadriga Consort, Maddy Prior, Heather Alexander, Leslie Fish, Tim van Eyken, Barry Dransfield, Of Cabbages and Kings, Winterfylleth (band), John Langstaff, Ayreheart and many other performers. The song is also a central part of Simon Emmerson's The Imagined Village project. Martin and Eliza Carthy perform the song alongside Paul Weller on the Imagined Village album. Billy Bragg sang in Weller's place on live performances. Rock guitarist Joe Walsh performed the song live in 2007 as a tribute to Jim Capaldi. Lithuanian folk-blues band Working Hobo performs this song in Lithuanian which is called D?onas Mie?is.
Julian Cope's album Drunken Songs has the following written on its frontcover: "John Barleycorn died for somebody's sins but not mine." This is both a reference to John Barleycorn and Patti Smith. The album Drunken Songs is an entire album that is lyrically and at times musically referring to drinking culture, pub culture and its surrounding folklore.
See also
- Corn dolly
- Harvest
References
Sources
- The Function of Song in Contemporary British Drama by Elizabeth Hale Winkler On line book
- British Folk Music - John Barleycorn
External links
- "John Barleycorn revisited," essay by Peter Wood, British folk music scholar, 2004
- Works related to John Barleycorn at Wikisource
- A pleasant new Ballad to sing both Euen and Morne, / Of the bloody murther of Sir John Barley-corne, 1624?, English Broadside Ballad Archive.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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