Judas [Child 23]

DESCRIPTION: "Hit wes upon a Scere Þorsday þat vre Louerd aros." Judas is sent on an errand to Jerusalem by Jesus. As he goes out, he is cheated (by his sister!) of thirty pieces of silver. He therefore betrays Jesus to get his money back.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1300 (ms. Cambridge Trinity College B 14.39, f. 34a, also sometimes called ms. Trinity Cambridge 323)
KEYWORDS: Jesus betrayal MiddleEnglish
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
April 6, 30 C.E. - most likely date for the arrest of Jesus (the crucifixion took place the following day)
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (15 citations):
Child 23, "Judas" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 108-109, "Judas" (1 text)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 56, "Judas" (1 text plus interlinear modern English translation)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 97, "Judas" (1 text)
Morgan-MedievalBallads-ChivalryRomanceAndEverydayLife, pp. 126-127, "Judas" (1 text, even more "adapted" [read "messed up"] than the others in this anthology)
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles 16, "Judas" (3 texts, 2 tunes, of which only the first could possibly be this ballad, and even it looks suspicious)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1649
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2768
ADDITIONAL: Kenneth Sisam, editor, _Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose_ Oxford, 1925, pp. 168-169, "Judas" (with notes on pp. 256-258). This is now considered the best transcription of the original manuscript, replacing Skeat's transcription quoted by Child.
Carleton Brown, editor, _English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1932, p. 38, "The Bargain of Judas" (1 text)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #30, p. 54, "Judas" (1 text)
Maxwell S. Luria & Richard Hoffman, _Middle English Lyrics_, a Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 1974 pp, 196-197, #203 (no title) (1 text)
Karin Boklund-Lagopolou, _I have a yong suster: Popular song and Middle English lyric_, Four Courts Press, 2002, pp. 51-52, "(no titlle)" (1 text)
DT 23, JUDAS
MANUSCRIPT: {MSCambridgeTrinity323}, Cambridge University, Trinity College MS. 323, folio 32
Roud #3964
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Edward the Martyr" (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "Sir Aldingar" [Child 59] (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "Merie Sungen the Muneches Bennen Ely (Merry Sang the Monks of Ely)" (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "Mirie It Is While Sumer Ylast (Merry It Is While Summer Lasts)"" (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "Wolle Ye Iheren of Twelte Day"" (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "The Cursed Dancers of Colbeck"" (another candidate for "Earliest English Ballad")
cf. "My Heart Is Woe (When That My Sweet Son Was Thirty Winter Old)" (themes)
cf. "Judas and Jesus" (listed by Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles as a version of this ballad)
cf. "Oh, Judy, Oh Judy" (listed by Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles as a version of this ballad)
NOTES [3468 words]: Many scholars have made attempts to locate "the earliest English Ballad." Some examples of such claims are "Edward the Martyr" and "Merie Sungen the Muneches Bennen Ely (Merry Sang the Monks of Ely)." Richard Faques (Fawkes) has been credited with publishing the earliest extant printed ballad, Skelton's "A Ballade of the Scottish King" (only surviving copy is in the British Library, 1513?) -- but, of course, the author of that is known, and it never went into tradition, and there are certainly ballads that are older despite being printed later (and "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117] was almost certainly printed earlier, if you want a Child Ballad that was printed before Skelton's piece; it's just that the "Gest" is a romance, not a ballad). So there are many candidates for the title of "oldest ballad." This is F. J. Child's candidate -- and, while his is not the last word, "Judas" certainly has a better claim than any of the other songs mentioned.
The use of the word "ballad" is little help, because a mention of a "ballad" might well mean a French ballade, a form quite common in the fourteenth century. There are however some references to ballads which seem to be to popular pieces. The alliterative poem Mum and the Soothsegger is probably from 1409-1410 (Barr, p. 23); the manuscript containing it, British Library MS. Additional 41666, was probably copied between 1450 and 1475 (Barr, p. 22), and was first brought to light in 1928. The story is a sort of political argument between Mum, who stay quiet in the case of royal malfeasance, and a Soothsegger (soothsayer, which in this case means one who speaks truth -- in particular, truth to power) about the right way to deal with a misbehaving king (almost certainly Henry IV). Near the end of the surviving poem (the ending is lost, and perhaps the beginning as well), the narrator finds a collection of writings and is assessing them; lines 1343-1345 (Barr, p. 186) tell us that
Now forto conseille the king unknytte I a bagge
Where many a pryue poyse is preynnted withynne
Yn bokes vnbredid in balade-wise made
That is,
Now so as to advise the king I opened a bag
Where many a private verse is written within
In books un-opened, made in ballad-style.
Given that we know that political ballads would start to circulate within a century, it seems likely that this is a reference to political ballads of c. 1400, although no such works have survived.
The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is told in Matt. 26:14-16, 47f.; Mark 14:10-11, 43f.; Luke 22:3-6, 47f.; compare also John 13:2, 27, 18:2f. The story of Judas betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver is found only in Matt. 26:15, with the sequel in 27:3-10 (Matthew's story is based on Zech. 11:12-13, which also mentions thirty pieces of silver, although in a completely different context). The notion of Judas as treasurer and thief occurs only in John 12:4-6, (13:29).
The manuscript containing this piece is known by two catalog numbers, Trinity College (Cambridge) 323 and Trinity College (Cambridge) B 14.39. The former is the number in the continuous manuscript catalog (the newer catalog; Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 48); the latter in the classified catalog; the prefix "B" places it among the theological manuscripts (as opposed to "R" for historical manuscripts or "O" for manuscripts from the Gale collection; JamesMSS, p. vii). The volume as now bound seems to contain two separate manuscript books, both on vellum (Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 49). Several different hands were involved; more on this below.
According to Woolf, p. 373, the manuscript is one of the two oldest containing Middle English religious lyrics. She describes it as containing "a substantial number of lyrics on death, three Body and Soul poems, one on the Signs of Death... a surprisingly large collection of lyrics addressed to the Virgin... a poem on the five joys... and the much-copied Passion lyric, 'Wose se[th]e on rode'. These verses form part of a collection of preaching-notes, mainly in Latin." Despite being written in several hands, Wenzel also considers it a preacher's notebook (Wenzel, p. 8; cf. Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 50).
The handwriting is revealing. It uses Old English thorn (þ, later written "y") for "th," but there is no sign of eth (ð) or yogh (ȝ). Eth was going out of use by this time, but yogh was alive and well. And the style, although it has some accommodations to English hands (e.g. in the use of W), looks more like contemporary Latin hands than English secular writing. I think this is a scribe who was trained first to write Latin. Carlton Brown implicitly agrees, thinking the manuscript the product of a religious house and tentatively suggesting the Dominicans, although David Jeffrey argued for the Franciscans (Severs/Hartung, volume 6, p. 1759).
In its final form, it must be after 1253, since it has an epitaph (in Latin) for Robert Grossteste, who died in that year (Severs/Hartung, volume 6, p. 1759).
At least one other piece in the book, "Wolle Ye Iheren of Twelte Day," probably qualifies as a carol; it's just possible that "On Leome Is in this World Ilist" was one also, although likely this was just a classification error.
Even though this piece exists only in the Trinity College manuscript, it should not be assumed that Child's transcription is authoritative. The text in Child's volume 1 was printed without reference to the manuscript, which had been temporarily lost (according to JamesMSS, p. 438, "It had been accidentally removed from Cambridge [in 1863] among the books belonging to a former Fellow who was ceasing to reside in College, and the box in which it had been packed remained unopened until his death"). The book was returned in 1896.
As a result, Child's original publication, a reprint of a printed edition, contains many orthographic inaccuracies (e.g. concerning u/v, i/j, and the use of th rather than the runic thorn þ -- as well as seven conjectural emendations replacing s with h). It also omitted the duplicated lines at lines 8, 25, 30. (Lines that are actually somewhat debatable; the lines are written just once but marked ".ii." -- a symbol thought to mean they should be repeated; Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 49. I think this understanding is correct; the manuscript uses large initials and hanging indents for the start of each couplet, but the lines marked .ii. disturb this pattern, which would be restored if those lines were doubled. On the other hand, David C. Fowler on p. 1761 of Severs/Hartung believes that .ii. does not mean to repeat the line but to repeat the melody to create a three-line stanza with the second strain of the melody sung twice -- a suggestion going back to Skeat.) Also, the manuscript was written with imperfect word divisions (the words are divided, but I'd guess they weren't divided in the source, plus the spaces between words are small enough that it's sometimes hard to tell if a space was intended). In addition, although the manuscript is well-written in a well-defined hand, the script is sometimes unclear. And finally, the copyist may not have been perfectly familiar with the dialect of the original.
Child later printed a corrected version, giving the readings of the manuscript verbatim (as read by Skeat). However, modern ballad scholars have almost always followed at least one of the imperfections of Child's original text (omitting duplicated lines, modifying the thorns, exchanging u and v, using Child's h instead of s, etc.)
Scholars should keep in mind that even Child's corrected text, so badly reproduced by later scholars, is open to reinterpretation. Sisam, pp. 168-169, prints a text which differs in hundreds of particulars from Child's original version. It shows several differences even from Child and Skeat's manuscript collation:
* five places where the editors break words differently,
* Sisam says that in line 22 "Crist" was originally written by the scribe but then marked for erasure. This MAY indicate comparison of two texts of the ballad. But the mark Sisam thinks indicates text to be deleted is only a SINGLE mark, where most scribes would have used two (dots above at least two letters of "CST," not just one above "C"), so instead of an erasure mark, it might be a mistake.
* Sisam also considers line 27 to be intact; Child implies it is defective.
* two major variants (in line 6 Sisam reads "cunesman" for "tunesman"; in line 16, "top" for "cop")
(If you are wondering how anyone could confuse a "c" with a "t," recall that we are talking about a thirteenth or early fourteenth century manuscript. At that time, the letter "c" was written much as it is now -- but a "t" looked a bit like a lower-case Greek tau, 𝜏: It was a circular stroke, like a "c," with a horizontal line at the top. There were also forms of script in which both looked much like a modern cursive "a." For samples, see Thompson, pp. 474-479 and especially Moorman, pp. 27-29. Many other letters of the time have strong horizontal strokes as well, so it can be hard to tell, say, "ht" from "hc." In a manuscript with few word divisions, this can cause much difficulty. When I look at the scans, though, it appears clear to me that Sisam is right about line 6. Line 16 could go either way. For those who read German, there is a 1973 book by Karl Reichl, Religiose Dichtung im englishen Hochmittelalter: Untersuchung und Edition der Handschrift B.14.39 des Trinity College in Cambridge. Good luck finding a copy; I can't even find full bibliographic information).
Axton's version of the text, reprinted by Boklund-Lagopolou, agrees with Sisam in reading "cunesman" in line 6 and "top" in line 16. BrownC, p. 38, has "cunesman" in line 6, "top" in line 16 (which he numbers line 17). Boklund-Lagopolou accepts an emendation proposed by BrownC in line 27, adding "freke" to correct the line that Child thought defective (BrownC, p. 184, attributes the conjecture to Child, even though Child didn't print it!)
If you want to see the manuscript yourself, you can try https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=B.14.39&n=B.14.39#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-1974%2C-275%2C7780%2C5486 (checked August 11, 2023) or google "trinity manuscript B.14.39"; as of this writing, the link headed "B.14.39-40 - James Catalogue" will take you to a scan. Go to f033v-f034r; it's on the right-hand page (that is, 034r). (Incidentally note that the left and right pages are in different hands and use different inks, with "Judas" in much better condition than the material on folio 33v. BrownC, p. 184, is of the opinion that "Judas" is not complete, which raises the question of whether the next page was written before "Judas," and the ballad cut off because there was no room for the conclusion.)
Chambers, p. 151, believes "Mr. Kenneth Sisam's transliteration... seems more precise than Child's." Chambers therefore reprints Sisam's text. Chambers also notes that the "piece seems to be written in a mixture of septenar and Alexandrine [16-syllable] lines, of which there are other thirteenth century examples." There are indeed quite a few romances which can't seem to decide how many syllables belong in a line, but it's obviously a rare thing in a ballad. (Of course, some of that may be textual corruption. Or, as one of the web pages I read while searching for a facsimile suggested, "Judas" as we have it may be an abridgment of a longer version, which might have had a more regular meter.) Wells, p. 312, describes it as "a fragment of 33 verses [i.e. lines] of six or seven stresses in couplets." But my natural inclination, looking at Sisam's text, was to interpret the lines as having four feet of three syllables rather than six or seven of two syllables -- four stresses per line, not six. (Which also makes it more ballad-like.)
Sisam's notes (pp. 256-258) are twice as long as the ballad itself; they are well worth consulting, as they give much more background information than Child.
Chambers, p. 153, thinks the ending so abrupt that he suspects the last part of the poem may have been lost. He also questions whether "it can properly be regarded as a ballad"; he strongly questions its "popular" nature. (As do I.)
Chambers finds another piece of a similar style in the "Judas" manuscript, concerning Twelfth Night, which was roughed out by the scribe before being written; he speculates that the scribe may have been the author of the Twelfth Night item -- and hence perhaps of "Judas" as well. (I originally thought Chambers was referring to the "Story of Herod and the Magi," which looks like a folk poem; it begins "Wolle ye iheren of twelte day." However, it appears based on comments by Friedman, p. 15, that the reference is actually to the piece indexed as "On Leome Is in this World Ilist") According to Wells, p. 408, it is "styled by its editor 'a thirteenth-century literary imitation of a popular ballad,' consisting of 80 four-stress lines normally abababab written as 40 long lines." Observe that, although it seemingly is not a folk ballad, its existence implies that this was a format to imitate.
I mention this possibility about the authorship of "Judas," but it strikes me as unlikely. There are several reasons for this. According to a passage I found in the Google Books edition of Elaine M. Treharne, Old and Middle English c.890-c.1400: an anthology (p. 406?), perhaps as many as five scribes worked on the manuscript, which contains works in Latin and Anglo-Norman French as well as Middle English. JamesMSS himself indicates clearly that multiple hands were involved, although he does not say how many; if anything, the estimate of five seems low. The number of lines per page varies substantially, and there are even a few cases of different numbers of columns per page! Many of the pieces in the manuscript cannot have been composed by the scribe, since the 40 or so English items include the well-known "Say Me, Wight in the Broom," which exists in another copy, and "When the Turuf Is Thy Tour" ["When the turf is your tower"], a translation of a Latin poem on death. What are the odds that four or more scribes would copy older works while the fifth added his own poems?
Trehame also says that the language of the book "may point to an origin in West Worcestershire," which strikes me as a little too strong a localization. It also seems to contradict Skeat's opinion (JamesMSS, p. 439) that the scribe was a Norman, although Normans of course were found in various places in England. The manuscript itself is a vellum codex, rather small (7.125"x5.375"), which has been bound with a later (XIV/XV century) manuscript, MS Trinity 324 (or B.14.40). Trinity 324 seems far less significant; an online catalog (http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/mwm/browse?type=ms&id=11) says it contains "very little English." The small size may indicate a volume intended for private use.
JamesMSS, p. 443, says that "Judas" (his item #17 in the manuscript) is in the same hand as his item #4, "The Life of St. Margaret." The items which precede and follow are in different hands. The Judas scribe, in James's opinion, also wrote the following:
* JamesMSS's #5, a poem in French and English, "Ihesu crist le fiȝ marie cil ke tut le munde fist."
* JamesMSS's #6, a poem in French and Latin, with some of the Latin in red, "Seinte mari moder milde mater saluatoris."
* JamesMSS's #13, in part, about two dozen short notes, mostly English poems of three to twelve lines although portions are in Latin. "Say Me, Wight in the Broom" is one of these, but apparently not by the "Judas" scribe.
The contents of the book are very much a jumble. If there is an overall plan, it is not evident. Perhaps it is just a collection of loose sheets from a monastery. Although some of the other pieces might be "folk" (one is listed as the "Hymn of the Five Joys"; another has been dubbed "Look on Me with Thy Sweet Eyes"; there is also the famous "I Sing of a Maiden"), they do not look to be truly ballad-like.
Turning to the content of the poem itself -- the Bible gives very little family information about Judas (or any of the apostles). Matthew, Mark, and Luke have nothing at all about Judas's background except the name Iscariot. John, however, sometimes times refers to him as "Judas of Simon Iscariot" (i.e. Judas [son] of Simon Iscariot); so John 6:71, 13:12 (13:26 seems to have "Judas, [son] of Simon, Iscariot", although there is great variation in the manuscripts at this point).
The meaning of "Iscariot" is unknown. The best conjecture (BrownR, p. 298) is that it is a transliteration of Hebrew "ish Q(e)riyyot," "man of Kerioth." Indeed, we find some manuscripts calling him so -- in John 6:71, although the vast majority of manuscripts, including the great Vatican codex and the two early manuscripts P66 and P75, call him "Iskariot," the Codex Sinaiticus and the Koridethi Codex call him "Judas from Kerioth." Even more interesting is the reading of the Codex Bezae, which calls him "Judas Skarioth." In John 12:4, it is Bezae which calls him Judas from Kerioth; so also in 13:2, 13:26; in 14:22, which refers to the "other" Judas, Bezae has "Judas, not the [one] from Kerioth" where other manuscripts read "Judas not (the) Iscariot." In Mark 3:19, for "Iscarioth," Bezae has "Skarioth"; in the parallels in Matthew 3:4 and 6:16, Bezae again has "Skarioth." And so forth (data from Aland). Moffatt actually went so far as to translate "from Kerioth" in the early editions of his "New Translation" (so, e.g. John 6:71; Moffatt, p. 511), although he later revised this.
Even if Judas Iscariot is Judas from Kerioth, it is not certain where that town is; BrownR (following many earlier commentators) thinks the town is Kerioth in Judah, but Westcott, p. 112, suggests that it should be Kerioth-Hezron. (Note that "Kiriath" is the Hebrew word for "town" or "city," so "Kiriath-Baal," e.g., is "Baal's Town," so if Kerioth is an error for "Kiriath" -- quite possible when one recalls that Hebrew was written without vowels -- then there would be dozens if not hundreds of Kiriath/Kerioths in Judea.)
Because Judas, according to John, is the son of Simon, and Mark 14:3 says that the feast where the sinful woman washed Jesus's feet with her hair was at the home of Simon the Leper, and John 12:3 makes the woman involved Mary sister of Lazarus, one scholar speculated that Judas was the older brother of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha (BrownR, p. 448). This would presumably mean that it was either Mary or Martha who stole the cash Judas had earlier stolen in this ballad!
Axton thought the piece should be connected to the legendary life of Saint Judas as found in the South English Legendary, thought to be from the thirteenth century (Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 52). Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 57, tentatively suggests that the whole story of the poem might be connected with legends that Judas engaged in incest with his mother, the idea being that Judas, in the poem, had an incestuous relationship with his sister.
Fowler, p. 82, has a softer version of this, apparently first suggested by Dronke, that the "sister" is actually Judas's mistress.
Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 58, points out that betrayal of a loyalty for money would have seemed particularly horrendous to those accustomed to feudal relations, which is true -- although, by the time this poem was written, the transition to "bastard feudalism" was at least getting started, and in "bastard feudalism," it was normal to sell your loyalty to the highest bidder.
None of this is particularly useful, but it shows that speculation about Judas began quite early -- Sinaiticus is from the fourth century, Bezae probably from the fifth, and some of these variants are supported by translations which may have been made earlier still. Later legends are common; see the list on pp. 201-202 of Simpson/Roud. So it is little surprise to see a piece such as this arise. But there seems to be no other source for this tale of Judas and his sister.
I do add, however, an apocryphal New Testaement story, the "Story of Joseph of Arimathaea," the oldest manuscript of which is from the twelfth century (JamesNT, p. 161), making it roughly contemporary with this piece. This doesn't mention a sister of Judas -- but it says that Judas was the nephew of Caiaphas, and hired to spy on Jesus from the start (JamesNT, pp. 161-162) -- and that it was Sarra, the daughter of Caiaphas, who accused Jesus of claiming he could destroy the Temple (JamesNT, p. 162). So while Judas didn't have a sneaky sister, he did have a sneaky first cousin, who might loosely be called his sister.
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles claims that his informant ("Mayberry Thomas," of Tennessee) had seen this piece in broadsheets, but there is no evidence of this, and many scholars hold that Niles made up his text 16A based on the old British text. - RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 6.6
File: C023

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2023 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.