"Sir Hugh", also known as "The Jew's Daughter" or "The Jew's Garden", is a traditional British folk song,

Child ballad The Child Ballads are List of the Child Ballads, 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies ...

No. 155,

Roud The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...

No. 73, a folkloric example of a

blood libel Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mu ...

. The original texts are not preserved, but the versions written down from the 18th century onwards show a clear relationship with the 1255 accusations of the murder of

Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 27 August 1255) was an English boy whose death in Lincoln, England, Lincoln was blood libel, falsely attributed to Jews. He is sometimes known as Little Saint Hugh or Little Sir Hugh to distinguish him from the adu ...

by Jews in Lincoln, making it likely that the known versions derive from compositions made around that time. The title is a corruption of "Little Saint Hugh".

Synopsis

Some boys are playing with a ball, in Lincoln. They accidentally throw it over the wall of a Jew's house (or castle). The daughter of the Jew comes out, dressed in green, and beckons to a boy to come in to fetch it. He replies that he cannot do this without his playmates. She entices him in with fruit and a gold ring. Once he has sat down on a throne, she stabs him in the heart "like a sheep". There is much blood. When the boy fails to come home, his mother concludes that he is

skylarking ''Skylarking'' is the ninth studio album by the English rock band XTC, released 27 October 1986 on Virgin Records. Produced by American musician Todd Rundgren, it is a loose concept album about a nonspecific cycle, such as a day, a year, the ...

. She sets out to find him, with a rod to beat him. From beyond the grave, the boy asks his mother to prepare a funeral winding sheet, and that he is "asleep". In some versions he asks that if his father calls for him, the father is to be told that he is "dead". In some versions the boy's corpse shines "like gold". In some versions the Jew's daughter catches the blood in a basin and puts a prayer book at his head and a bible at his feet.

Background

'' The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich'' (1173) popularised the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

accusation against Jews of ritual murder based on the murder of

William of Norwich William of Norwich (died 22 March 1144) was an apprentice who lived in the English city of Norwich. He suffered a violent death during Easter 1144. The city's French-speaking Jewish community was blamed for his death, but the crime was never so ...

(1144). Henry III's (r. 1216–1272) court purchased and abused Jewish loans to acquire land from less well off barons and knights, causing many to blame Jews for their insecurity. In the 1230s, some English towns expelled Jews, and organised violence against Jews took place in the 1260s. The death of

(1255) falls into this period. The facts of the original story are obscure. An admission of ritual killing was extracted from a Jew named Copin by John Lexington, a member of the Royal court and the brother of the

Bishop of Lincoln The Bishop of Lincoln is the Ordinary (officer), ordinary (diocesan bishop) of the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln in the Province of Canterbury. The present diocese covers the county of Lincolnshire and the unitary authority areas of Nort ...

. The Bishop stood to gain greatly from the establishment of a

cult Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...

of martyrdom, as it would attract pilgrims and donations. The King intervened, executed the man who had confessed and ordered the arrest of a further 90 Jews. Eighteen were hanged for refusing to take part in the trial, while the remainder were later pardoned. Because of the intervention of the King, the story became well known and gained credibility. The contemporaneous chronicler

Matthew Paris Matthew Paris, also known as Matthew of Paris (; 1200 – 1259), was an English people, English Benedictine monk, English historians in the Middle Ages, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts, and cartographer who was based at St A ...

(d. 1259) mentions the story. The story also appears in '' Annals of Waverley''. The Paris version of events was drawn on by

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He ...

. Elements of the Paris and Chaucer versions of the story can be found in some versions of the ballad. It is likely that the earliest versions were composed close to the time of the events. "It is … most likely that the ur-ballad of St. Hugh in English was composed in the late thirteenth century whilst interest in the martyrdom was still high"

Textual variants and analysis

The song has been found in England, Scotland, Canada, the US and, to a lesser extent, Ireland. It was still popular in the early 19th century. There is an Anglo-Norman ballad (

medieval French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th Reliques'' (1783) has a version from Scotland. David Herd (1776) had a version, and so did Robert Jameison (1806). McCabe says that the "earliest texts of Sir Hugh are Scottish … [and] preserve the medieval saint's legend in its most coherent form." The song may also incorporate elements of other medieval anti-semitic texts, particularly a miracle story also drawn on by Chaucer in the ''Prioress' Tale'' that features Jews murdering a child, often a school child, that habitually sings an anthem near where they live, and throw the body into their privy. These elements occur in some of the early versions of ''Sir Hugh''. The known versions have lost many of the elements of the original story, or have simplified them over time. For instance, the original takes place near a castle, while this becomes a castle belonging to a Jew. The well near a castle becomes a private well set in the castle gardens. The location, "Merry Lincoln" becomes garbled, and dropped. The game becomes a ball game. The element of crucifixion is lost. The timing of the events is sometimes preserved as midsummer, sometimes altered to Easter. The role of the mother in warning against associating with the Jews, and later accusing the Jews, is simplified and dropped. (In some versions she becomes a disciplinarian figure, and eventually, even becomes the murderess.) Miraculous elements such as bells ringing without hands are dropped. The funeral element disappears, and the number of characters reduced. New elements, such as rain or mist, are added, some including references to Scotland, implying that the ballad may have travelled back into England from Scotland. Stanzas from '' Robin Hood's Death'' are incorporated. Some of the later versions, particularly the American texts known as ''The Jew's Garden'', incorporate elements of another song about child murder, '' Lamkin''. Nevertheless, McCabe concludes that the most persistent element in ''Sir Hugh'' is the anti-semitic element: "despite the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 … with its consequence that many ballad singers knew no Jews, reference to a Jewish murderess is almost always preserved." Roud and Bishop make a similar point: Karl Heinz Göller gives a different view of the origins and resonances of the ballad. Like McCabe, he traces changes showing that the form of the elements are simplified. For Göller, one side of the ballad is a fairy tale, onto which anti-semitic elements have been added, and at later dates, dropped and forgotten. Thus ''Sir Hugh'' is in his opinion a "symbolic story", of temptation and sexual deflowering. He details how the anti-semitic elements are largely dropped in the American versions, and even the violence is removed, as the ballad in some cases becomes a nursery rhyme. He speculates that a version existed prior to its merger with the Hugh of Lincoln story, which "must have been similar to the Frog Prince tale in respect to love and the introduction to its mysteries". Göller points to

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

as a figure who recognised the tension between the symbolic story and the anti-Semitic tale. In '' Ulysses'', Stephen and his host debate an Irish version of the song. Stephen "regards the ballad as a parable of human fate. Hugh challenges his fate once through carelessness, twice through premeditation. Fate appears in the person of the Jewish girl, who, as an incarnation of Hope and Youth, allures him into a secret chamber, and kills him like a sacrificial animal." On the other hand, his host remembers the accusations of ritual murder, "the incitation of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulis". Given the tension between the story of Hugh, murdered by Jews, and the symbolic story that Göller describes, he concludes that the "introduction of details from the Hugh of Lincoln story is thus in all probability a secondary phenomenon. It is very difficult to say when the amalgamation took place. Events such as the discovery of the bones of the murdered little boy in Lincoln Minster could have been a catalyst. But it is more likely that the anti-Semitism of a part of the ballads and the localization in Lincoln is a kind of ''euhemerist'' contamination similar to the Prioress's Tale, which gave rise to associations with the Hugh of Lincoln story through the similarity of its subject matter. Most of these anti-Semitic details have disappeared in the course of oral tradition, because they were no longer understood."

Other parallels

Some of the ideas in the extant versions have parallels elsewhere. For instance, the idea of a corpse speaking (sending thoughts) to the living occurs in the ballad '' The Murder of Maria Marten'', ''

The Cruel Mother "The Cruel Mother" (a.k.a. "The Greenwood Side" or "Greenwood Sidey") () is a murder ballad originating in England that has since become popular throughout the wider English-speaking world. According to Roud and Bishop :''Widely collected in Bri ...

'' (Child 20) and in '' The Unquiet Grave'' (Child 78). Gruesome killings are quite common in Child ballads.Ewan MacColl, in the notes to the song "Child Owlet" on the album ''Blood And Roses, Vol. 2'', 1981, ESB 80.

Controversy

Victorian collectors were surprised to find evidence of a ballad featuring a

, and two wrote books on the subject.

James Orchard Halliwell James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born James Orchard Halliwell; 21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English writer, Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Life The son of Thomas Hal ...

wrote ''Ballads and Poems Respecting Hugh of Lincoln'' in 1849. In the same year, and unknown to Halliwell, Abraham Hume wrote the book ''Sir Hugh of Lincoln, or, an Examination of a Curious Tradition respecting the Jews, with a notice of the Popular Poetry connected with it''. One of the earliest professional recordings of the song was by

A. L. Lloyd Albert Lancaster Lloyd (29 February 1908 – 29 September 1982),Eder, Bruce. (29 September 1982A. L. Lloyd – Music Biography, Credits and Discography AllMusic. Retrieved on 2013-02-24. usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English ...

on "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol 2" in 1956, produced by Kenneth Goldstein, himself a Jew. Another interpreter of the song,

Ewan MacColl James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a British folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as o ...

, described the ballad as "the barbaric functioning of medieval thinking". It is still a controversial topic as to whether it is something that should be performed or recorded; and if it is, whether it is reasonable to remove the anti-Semitic elements. The 1975 version recorded by

Steeleye Span Steeleye Span are a British folk rock band formed in 1969 in England by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings and established London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior. The band were part of the 1970s British folk revival, ...

, for instance, removes these references entirely.

Music

Edward Francis Rimbault Edward Francis Rimbault (13 June 1816 – 26 September 1876) was a British organist, musicologist, book collector and author.) Life Rimbault was born in Soho, London, to a family of French Huguenot extraction that had emigrated to England in 168 ...

printed a version of the ballad in his ''Musical Illustrations of Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' of 1850.

Recordings

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * See Chapter 11, ''The Survival of a Saint's Legend: Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter (Child 155)'' *

Primary sources

* *

External links

Discussion about the ballad
on the

Columbia State University Columbia State University was a California-based diploma mill that operated from the mid-1980s until its court-ordered closure in 1998.

website * On Mudcat: *
The "Gypsy" version is available for comparison
{{Authority control English folk songs Antisemitism in England Songs about the United Kingdom Child Ballads Murder ballads Songs about child abuse Antisemitic works Blood libel Race-related controversies in music