Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter [Child 155]

DESCRIPTION: A child tosses the ball into a Jew's/Gypsy's garden. The Jew's daughter/wife lures him into the house, where she murders him, (for ritual purposes?). Dying, he gives instructions for his burial (with a prayer book at his head and a grammar at his feet).
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1765 (Percy)
KEYWORDS: murder death ritual Gypsy Jew lastwill burial
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber),England(All)) Ireland US(Ap,MA,MW,NE,Ro,SE,So) Canada(Mar) Bahamas
REFERENCES (36 citations):
Child 155, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (21 texts)
Bronson 155, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (66 versions)
Percy/Wheatley I, pp. 54-60, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
BarryEckstormSmyth pp. 461-462, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (notes plus an excerpt from Child A)
Belden, pp. 69-73, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (2 texts plus a fragment)
Randolph 25, "The Jew's Garden" (3 texts plus a fragment, 1 tune) {Bronson's #38}
Randolph/Cohen, pp. 47-49, "The Jew's Garden" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 25A) {Bronson's #38}
Eddy 20, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #48}
Flanders/Olney, pp. 30-32, "Little Harry Huston" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #66}
Flanders-Ancient3, pp. 119-126, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (2 texts, 2 tunes) {A=Bronson's #66; B=#65 with verbal variants}
Davis-Ballads 33, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (13 texts, 7 tunes entitled "The Jew's Daughter," "It Rained a Mist," "A Little Boy Threw His Ball So High," "Sir Hugh, or Little Harry Hughes," Sir Hugh"; 3 more versions mentioned in Appendix A) {Bronson's #39, #54, #3, #34, #6, #47, #53}
Davis-More 30, pp. 229-238, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts, 4 tunes)
BrownII 34, "Sir Hugh; or, The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts)
Hudson 19, pp. 116-117, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (1 short text, lacking the actual murder)
Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 171-175, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (3 texts, the first also in Davis, with local titles "A Little Boy Threw His Ball So High," "Little Sir Hugh," "Hugh of Lincoln"; 1 tune on p. 403) {Bronson's #3}
Scarborough-NegroFS, pp. 53-55, "A Little Boy Threw His Ball" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #3}
Brewster 18, "Sir Hugh" (3 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #44}
Leach, pp. 425-431, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts)
Creighton-NovaScotia 8, "Sir Hugh; or The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #2}
McNeil-SFB2, pp. 147-149, "Sonny Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Friedman, p. 62, "Sir Hugh (The Jew's Daughter)" (3 texts)
OBB 79, "Hugh of Lincoln and The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
SharpAp 31, "Sir Hugh" (7 texts plus 3 fragments, of which "I" in particular might be something else, 10 tunes){Bronson's #22, #20, #21, #23, #15, #10a, #16, #14, #8, #17}
Sharp-100E 8, "Little Sir Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FSNA 273, "The Queen's Garden" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gummere, pp. 164-166+336, "Sir Hugh" (1 text)
Sharp/Karpeles-80E 20, "Little Son Hugh (Sir Hugh)" (1 slightly edited text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #10}
Hodgart, p. 70, "Sir Hugh (The Jew's Daughter)" (1 text)
DBuchan 22, "Sir Hugh" (1 text)
JHCox 19, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (6 texts plus mentions of 8 more)
MacSeegTrav 14, "Sir Hugh" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
HarvClass-EP1, pp. 81-83, "Hugh of Lincoln" (1 text)
LPound-ABS, 5, pp. 13-14, "The Jewish Lady"; p. 15, "The Jew Lady" (2 texts)
Darling-NAS, pp. 36-40, "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter"; "The Fatal Flower Garden"; "It Rained a Mist" (3 texts)
DT 155, SIRHUGH* SIRHUGH1* SIRHUGH2* SIRHUGH3
ADDITIONAL: Walter de la Mare, _Come Hither_, revised edition, 1928; #420, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
ST C155 (Full)
Roud #73
RECORDINGS:
Cecilia Costello, "The Jew's Daughter (Sir Hugh)" (on FSB5 [as "The Jew's Garden"], FSBBAL2) {Bronson's #55}
[Mrs.?] Ollie Gilbert, "It Rained a Mist" (on LomaxCD1707) {Bronson's #35}
Nelstone's Hawaiians, "Fatal Flower Garden" (Victor 40193, 1929; on AAFM1) {Bronson's #12}
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Twa Brothers" [Child 49] (lyrics)
Notes: A.L. Lloyd reports, "In 1225 [others say 1255 -- which tells you something about how much of a historical basis all this has - RBW], in Lincoln, England, a boy named Hugh was supposed to have been tortured and murdered by Jews. A pogrom ensued." - PJS
The legend of Hugh of Lincoln became popular in many forms of literature; Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia (which uses the 1255 date) lists Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale," Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and a 1459 piece called Alphonsus of Lincoln, which I have not seen.
The link to "The Prioress's Tale" is undeniable, since lines 684-686 (Riverside edition) explicitly compares the tale to that of "yonge Hugh of Lyncoln, slayn also With cursed Jewes, as it is notable, For it is but a litel while ago." I personally don't see much connection, except thematic, to The Jew of Malta.
The charge of ritual murder against the Jews lasted far too long. This song is not the first example, and it is far from the last.
Although Jews suffered regular persecution from Christians from the time the Roman Empire was converted, it was the Crusades which really seemed to start the tendency to attack Jews. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Crusade and the Foundations of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1951 (I use the 1988 Cambridge paperback reprint), pp. 134-141, details the extreme misbehavior of the People's Crusade as it set out for Jerusalem in 1098-1099. (Interestingly, the particular mobs responsible for the atrocities almost all ended up being massacred themselves -- not by the Jews, but by Christians whom they also oppressed along the way. There seems to have been a particular sort of bone-headedness among Crusaders which caused them to think any furriner they saw must be a target worth attacking.)
Robert Seitz Frey and Nancy C. Thompson, The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank, 1988 (I use the 2002 Cooper Square Press edition), p. 56, note that it was bandied about at the time of the Phagan case (for background, see the notes to "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20]), and on p. 57 mention the Beilis case in Russia, where there were attempts to blame the entire Jewish race for a murder they did not commit. - RBW
File: C155

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