What is the poem Bonny Barbara Allan about?

Question

Did she commit suicide, or what?

Answer 1

Yes, but so does he. It's about spite and true love. He dies, she follows they're buried together side by side, flowers grow from each grave and intertwine through eternity, each with their own beauty and thorns.

It's a very perverted view of chivalry, jealousy, and romantic love.

I'd never kill myself for any woman. It's no way to prove you love someone. And if someone kills herself for me it's her tough luck, it proves she didn't have enough love in her to live much less love. One dead is enough, if not too many already.

Answer 2

Bonny Barbara Allan

Answer 3

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RE:
What is the poem Bonny Barbara Allan about?
Did she commit suicide, or what?

Answer 4

Well, here's the deal...in the original poem, NO, she did not kill herself, he died and she lived. He told his servants to go into the town and fetch Barbara Allen, and they did. When she came to the house and he professed his love to her, she reminded him that the previous time he saw her he was drunk and "slighted" her (undefined, but she was insulted in some way). He said that he was dying and that his friends should be kind to her. That was the original poem. However, Art Garfunkle (of Simon and Garfunkle) and Joan Baez have different versions, both of which continue the story (as in Paul Harvey's "the rest of the story") by having Barbara so filled with grief at the way she treated a man that loved her before he died that she too wants to die and either dies of grief or kills herself. They are buried either side by side (one song) or one in the old church yard, one in the new (the other song), where from his grave grows a rose (symbolic of his love for her) and from hers grows a green briar (thorny to match her attitude towards him), but in both songs the rose and the briar intertwine in a "true love's knot". If you ever see a painting, tattoo, watercolor, or picture of a rose intertwined with a briar, this is to what it refers.