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.[2] 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. Wikipedia
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 00:54:13 +0000
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