Sir Hugh is a traditional British folk song, Child ballad # 155, Roud

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 # 73.

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 can't 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. 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 prayerbook at his head and a bible at his feet. Several Scottish versions have the boys playing with a ball in Scotland. and are suddenly (and inexplicably) transferred to Lincoln later in the song.

Commentary

The incidental details about the sheep, the basin and the bible at his feet all suggest that there is some kind of ritual killing taking place. In medieval times such frightful anti-Semitic tales were common. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, and did not return until 1658. It seems unlikely that crude propaganda would be deliberately concocted and spread in the late 17th century, since Britain had become a refuge for persecuted religious minorities. The artist and poet Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire...

 (fl. c 1217 - 1259) has a Latin fragment of this ballad in his "Chronicle". There is a tale that in 1255 a boy was kidnapped by Jews, and crucified. His body was found in a well, and many Jews were convicted and hanged for the crime. This ghastly story appears in "Annals of Waverley". The "Jewish Virtual Library" gives a version of the story here. In those unenlightened times foreigners were persecuted all across Europe, on flimsy evidence or mere rumour.

The song has been found in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the USA. It was still "popular" in the early nineteenth century. The title "Sir Hugh" for a boy is unusual. Possibly there was some confusion because of Saint Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. See Hugh of Lincoln

Hugh of Lincoln

Hugh of Lincoln was at the time of the Reformation the best-known English saint after Thomas Becket.-Life:...

.

Historical Background

Folksongs are snapshots of social relationships at a point in history. Because of the historical context in which folk songs are usually presented, singing this song is no more an indicator that the singer is anti-semitic than singing "The Cooper O' Fife" is a sign that the singer approves of wife-beating. Reading the novels of Patrick O'Brian doesn't mean that the reader hates the French. One of the earliest professional recordings of the song was by A. L. Lloyd on "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol 2" in 1956. The editor and producer was Kenneth Goldstein, himself a Jew. MacColl described it as "the barbaric functioning of medieval thinking". Early collectors were so surprised to find evidence of medieval ways of thinking that they wrote entire books on the subject. James Orchard Halliwell

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps

James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps was an English Shakespearean scholar, and a collector of English Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales....

 wrote "Ballads and Poems Respecting Hugh of Lincoln" in 1849. In the same year, and unknown to Halliwell, Irishman 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". None of the ballad versions mention any punishment for the killing.

Standard References

Child cites this as being one of the oldest ballads, because it appears to belong to the Middle Ages, perhaps as old as the thirteenth century. The Columbia State University Website http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ballads/C155.html discusses it. On Mudcat the words are given http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=3647 and the controversy is discussed http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=67238.

Broadsides

Percy's "Reliques

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry

The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Thomas Percy and published in 1765.-Sources:...

" has a version from Scotland. David Herd (1776) had a version, and so did Robert Jameison (1806).

Textual Variants

As well the proposterous Scottish versions which magically relocate from Scotland to Lincoln, there is a version from Northamptonshire which says the boy was killed "like a swine" - something which makes no sense in the context of Jews. This probably indicates that the singer is unfamiliar with Jewish customs. A version from Northumberland sets the events at Easter. An American version of the early 20th century, by Nelstone's Hawaiians, collected on Harry Smith

Harry Everett Smith

Harry Everett Smith was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic...

's "Anthology of American Folk Music

Anthology of American Folk Music

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records , comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued from 1927 to 1932.Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the music...

", replaces the Jewish villainess with "a Gypsy lady, all dressed in yellow and green."

Non-English variants

There is an Anglo-Norman version (medieval French) and a fragment in Latin (Matthew Paris's "Chronicles").

Songs that refer to Sir Hugh

Little Sir Hugh - Steeleye Span

Steeleye Span

Steeleye Span are an English folk-rock band, formed in 1969 and remaining active today. Along with Fairport Convention they are amongst the best known acts of the British folk revival, and were among the most commercially successful, thanks to their hit singles "Gaudete" and "All Around My Hat"....

, from the album Commoner's Crown

Commoner's Crown

Commoners Crown is an album by the electric folk band Steeleye Span, its seventh release overall and the second album with the band's most commercially successful line-up. It reached number 21 in the UK album charts....

 (1975, Chrysalis Records

Chrysalis Records

Chrysalis Records was a British record label that was created in 1969. The name was both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and a combination of its founders names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis...

)

Motifs

The idea of a corpse speaking (sending thoughts) to the living occurs in the ballad "The Murder of Maria Marten", "The Cruel Mother" (Child 20) and in "The Unquiet Grave". Gruesome killings are quite common in Child ballads.

Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer mentions the legend (not the ballad) of the Blood libel against Jews in "The Prioress's Tale". Martin Luther wrote the book "On The Jews and Their Lies". Shakespeare's Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" demands a pound of flesh, and this play is sometimes claimed as being an anti-semitic play. In 1905 "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" appeared, but did not suggest that Jews are involved in the ritual killing of children. However, from 1840 through the present era, many books have sought to revive the Blood Libel legend for contemporary audiences. For instance, in The Matzah Of Zion, written by the Syrian Defense Minister, Mustafa Tlass

Mustafa Tlass

Lt. Gen. Mustafa Tlass is a Syrian politician and a long time minister of defense, now retired.-Rise to power:Tlass was born in the Syrian town of al-Rastan near the city of Homs to a prominent Sunni Muslim family. He joined the Ba'ath Party at the age of 15, and met Hafez al-Assad when studying...

 in 1986, the Blood Libel is described as a factual event.

Music

There was no printed tune for the ballad until Edward Francis Rimbault

Edward Francis Rimbault

Edward Francis Rimbault , English organist and author. Some of his historical musical anthologies were published by the Percy Society.*Co-founded the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1840....

's "Musical Illustrations of Bishob Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1850).

Recordings

Album/Single	Performer	Year	Variant	Notes
Fatal Flower Garden (Victor Records, 78 rpm)	Nelstone's Hawaiians	1930	Fatal Flower Garden	The earliest known professional recording; re-issued in 1952 on the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music.
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads vol 3	A. L. Lloyd	1956	Sir Hugh	.
The Max Hunter Folksong Collection	Mrs. Allie Long Parker	1958	The Jew's Garden	.
Southern Journey, Vol. 7: Ozark Frontier	Ollie Gilbert	1959	It Rained a Mist	.
The Max Hunter Folksong Collection	Fran Majors	1959	The Jew's Garden	.
Classic Ballads of Britain & Ireland	Cecilia Costello	1961	The Jew's Garden	.
The Long Harvest Vol 5	Ewan MacColl	1967	Sir Hugh	.
The Cock Doth Craw	Ian Campbell	1968	Little Sir Hugh	.
Commoner's Crown	Steeleye Span	1975	Little Sir Hugh	.
Shreds and Patches	John Kirkpatrick and sue Harris	1977	Little Sir William	.
Lost Lady Found	Vikki Clayton	1997	Sir Hugh of Lincoln	.
The Swimming Hour	Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire	2001	Fatal Flower Garden	.
Heading for Home	Peggy Seeger	2003	Fatal Flower Garden	.
BRITTEN: Folk Song Arrangements	Philip Langridge, Tenor, with Graham Johnson, Piano.	2005	Little Sir William	.
The Harry Smith Project	Gavin Friday	2006	Fatal Flower Garden	Essentially a cover of the 1930 version by Nelstone's Hawaiians, as re-issued on the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music.
The Elixir That'll Fix 'Er	The Black Strap Molasses Family	2008	Fatal Flower Garden	.

Further reading

• "The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350-1500" by Anthony Bale

External links

• columbia state University
• words to the song
• controversy.