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: homicide death ritual Gypsy Jew lastwill burial
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber,Bord),England(All)) Ireland US(Ap,MA,MW,NE,Ro,SE,So) Canada(Mar) West Indies(Bahamas)
REFERENCES (65 citations):
Child 155, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (21 texts)
Bronson 155, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (66 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 155, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (7 versions: #1, #4, #5, #10b, #21, #25, #28)
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "SIR HUGH OR THE JEW'S DAUGHTER"
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry I, pp. 54-60, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
Rimbault-Musical IllustrationsOfBishopPercysReliques II, pp. 46-47, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 partial text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #62}
Bell-Combined-EarlyBallads-CustomsBalladsSongsPeasantryEngland, pp. 189-`91, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
Broadwood/Maitland-EnglishCountySongs, p. 86, "Little Sir William" (1 text, 1 tune)
Riewerts-BalladRepertoireOfAnnaGordon-MrsBrownOfFalkland, pp. 254-255, "Hugh of Lincoln" (1 text)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 10, "Sir Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle 121, "Sir Hugh" (1 text)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #119, "Hugh of Lincoln" (1 text, 1 tune)
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine pp. 461-462, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (notes plus an excerpt from Child A)
Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety, 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-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 47-49, "The Jew's Garden" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 25A) {Bronson's #38}
Rainey/Pinkston-SongsOfTheOzarkFolk, pp. 8-9, "It Rained a Mist" (1 text, 1 tune) {compare Bronson's #35}
Arnold-FolkSongsofAlabama, pp. 42-43, "It Rained, It Mist" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #45}
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 33, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune)
Eddy-BalladsAndSongsFromOhio 20, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #48}
Grimes-StoriesFromTheAnneGrimesCollection, p. 30, "It Rained a Mist" (1 text)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, pp. 198-199, "'Twas On a Cold and Winter's Day" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #9]
Flanders/Olney-BalladsMigrantInNewEngland, pp. 30-32, "Little Harry Huston" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #66}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 119-126, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (2 texts, 2 tunes) {A=Bronson's #66; B=#65 with verbal variants}
Flanders/Ballard/Brown/Barry-NewGreenMountainSongster, pp. 254-256, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #65, with minor variants}
Davis-TraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 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-MoreTraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 30, pp. 229-238, "Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts, 4 tunes)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 34, "Sir Hugh; or, The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 34, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (2 excerpts, 2 tunes)
Smith-SouthCarolinaBallads, #XI, pp. 148-150, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter (The Two Playmates)" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #52}
Killion/Waller-ATreasuryOfGeorgiaFolklore, pp. 258-259, "The Jeweler's Daughter" (1 text)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #165, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #11}
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 19, pp. 116-117, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (1 short text, lacking the actual murder)
Burton/Manning-EastTennesseeStateCollectionVol1, pp. 1-2, "Little Son Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scarborough-ASongCatcherInSouthernMountains, 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-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 53-55, "A Little Boy Threw His Ball" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #3}
Roberts/Agey-InThePine #25, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
Brewster-BalladsAndSongsOfIndiana 18, "Sir Hugh" (3 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #44}
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 425-431, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (4 texts)
Korson-PennsylvaniaSongsAndLegends, pp. 36-38, "Fair Scotland" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #61}
Creighton-SongsAndBalladsFromNovaScotia 8, "Sir Hugh; or The Jew's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #2}
McNeil-SouthernFolkBalladsVol2, pp. 147-149, "Sonny Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 62, "Sir Hugh (The Jew's Daughter)" (3 texts)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 79, "Hugh of Lincoln and The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
Sharp-EnglishFolkSongsFromSouthernAppalachians 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-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 8, "Little Sir Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 273, "The Queen's Garden" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 164-166+336, "Sir Hugh" (1 text)
Sharp/Karpeles-EightyEnglishFolkSongs 20, "Little Son Hugh (Sir Hugh)" (1 slightly edited text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #10}
Hodgart-FaberBookOfBallads, p. 70, "Sir Hugh (The Jew's Daughter)" (1 text)
Buchan-ABookOfScottishBallads 22, "Sir Hugh" (1 text)
Cox-FolkSongsSouth 19, "Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter" (6 texts plus mentions of 8 more)
Gainer-FolkSongsFromTheWestVirginiaHills, pp. 68-69, "The Duke's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune)
MacColl/Seeger-TravellersSongsFromEnglandAndScotland 14, "Sir Hugh" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 30-31, "The Jew's Daughter" (1 text)
HarvardClassics-EnglishPoetryChaucerToGray, pp. 81-83, "Hugh of Lincoln" (1 text)
Pound-AmericanBalladsAndSongs, 5, pp. 13-14, "The Jewish Lady"; p. 15, "The Jew Lady" (2 texts)
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #11, "Little Saloo" (1 text, 1 tune)
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #18, "Little Harry Hughes and the Duke's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 36-40, "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter"; "The Fatal Flower Garden"; "It Rained a Mist" (3 texts)
JournalOfAmericanFolklore, Elsie Clews Parsons, "Spirituals and Other Folklore from the Bahamas," Vol. 41, No. 162 (Oct-Dec 1928), Toasts and other verses: Watlings p. 470, "Dere is many fine ladies" (1 text)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Walter MeCraw, "A Variant of 'Sir Hugh,'" Vol. VII, No. 1 (Jul 1959), pp. 35-36, "(It rained a mess, it rained a mess)" (1 text, 1 tune)
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, Ben Gray Lumpkin, "Two Child Ballads from Stanly County," Vol. XVII, No. 2 (Nov 1969), pp. 58-60, "Sonny Hugh" (1 text, 1 tune)
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:
Charles S. Brink, "Sir Hugh and the Jew's Daughter" (in BayardCollection, video 12 ("Charles S. Brink #2" starting at 16.55))
John Byrne, "Little Sir Hugh" (on IREarlyBallads)
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}
A.E. Richter, "Sir Hugh" (in BayardCollection, video 17 ("A.E. Richter" starting at 00.00))
Debra Sharpe, "Twas on a Cold & Winter Day (Sir Hugh) C.155" (Piotr-Archive #595, recorded 05/30/2023. A recollection, not an actual version, but it implies that the song was passed on by Pearl Jacobs Barusky)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Twa Brothers" [Child 49] (lyrics)
NOTES [8733 words]: ABOUT THIS SONG and THE REAL HUGH OF LINCOLN
A.L. Lloyd reports, "In 1225, in Lincoln, England, a boy named Hugh was supposed to have been tortured and murdered by Jews. A pogrom ensued." - PJS
Lloyd's date is incorrect. Benet (article on "St. Hugh of Lincoln") says 1255. So does Matthews, pp. 94-95, and Hoy/Stevens, p. 42, who note that Chaucer mentions the event at the end of the "Prioress's Tale." Similarly Langmuir, pp. 459-460, who quotes Chaucer's statement.
Child cites the Annals of Waverly and the account of Matthew Paris in support of the 1255 date. The Annals of Waverly have major chronological problems and were probably written after the event (Prestwich, p. 356n; Powicke, p. 603n), but Paris's account was written within a few years of the tragedy, so I would consider it close to decisive.
Lincoln Cathedral itself cites the 1255 date. Chaucer/Boyd, p. vii, cites this inscription from "the shrine of Little Saint Hugh [at] the Cathedral Church of Saint May, Lincoln": "Trumped-up stories of 'Ritual Murders' of Christian Boys by Jewish communities were common knowledge throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend, and the alleged victim was buried in the cathedral in the year 1255." The notice adds, "Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor the offenses of our Forefather."
Child's notes on this song are pretty good, covering many of the related stories, but there has been much work done since Child's time (notably the work of Carleton Brown). So this entry partly duplicates Child, but with new information as well.
Although this song is often associated with the murder of Hugh, Fowler, p. 259, says -- correctly, I think -- "It seems to me quite unlikely, however, that such a ballad could have lasted in tradition for five hundred years leaving no trace of its existence, only to emerge suddenly from obscurity with the publication of [Percy's] Reliques in 1765." Fowler seems to think the ballad an eighteenth century composition (on p. 260, he suggests "The Cruel Mother" [Child 20] as the primary model, with "Sweet William's Ghost" [Child 77] supplying much of the second half); I wouldn't go that far, but I think any connection to the thirteenth century Hugh at best indirect. Fowler, p. 268, suggests that the initial tune was "The Bitter Withy," even though the first collection of "Sir Hugh" is much older than "The Bitter Withy." I grant that "The Bitter Withy" is almost certainly far older than the first collection, so the timing probably works, but all of this depends on "Sir Hugh" being a fake.
Presumably Fowler's suggestion about "The Bitter Withy" is based on the ball that little Hugh throws into the Jew's garden in this ballad and the fact that Jesus is told to play at ball at the beginning of "The Bitty Withy."
But where did the whole idea of Jews murdering Christian children come from?
THE "BLOOD LIBEL" LEGEND and TALES OF JEWISH RITUAL MURDERS
The Blood Libel legend is ancient and traditional but seems to be almost entirely false. Alan Dundes, despite editing a book on the subject, explicitly declares it "evil folklore" (Dundes, p. 337).
Prejudice against Jews is nothing new. It's worth remembering that, well before the earliest case of Jews being accused of ritual crime in England, the members of the "People's Crusade" that preceded the First Crusade had killed any Jews they managed to identify along their way.
There had been major anti-Jewish riots in the period when Richard I was preparing his crusade, including an incident when 150 were killed at York, some of them after surrendering (Gillingham, p. 131, who blames the Crusade for whipping up passions about the Jews killing Jesus. According to McLynn, p. 120, the Jews were bringing a gift to the new king, but the mob assumed it was blasphemous). If a Jewish murder of a Christian did happen, one can almost see it as a case of balancing things out for the treatment of the Jews, for -- in addition to the general prejudice against them -- the King was allowed to seize their property when they died (Mortimer, p. 49), although he usually settled for "only" a third (Mortimer, p. 50). Thus a Jewish death often brought not only mourning but impoverishment.
Rose, p. 1, opens his book by discussing the origin of this legend-type: "The origin of the blood libel, or the ritual murder charge -- the accusation that Jews killed Christian children in order to use their blood for medicinal or ritual purposes and in hatred or mockery of Christ -- has never been determined. Such accusations appear in accounts for medieval, Reformation, and modern Europe, and in England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and Russia. It has cropped up in some communities in the United States, and, since the nineteenth century, in Islamic countries as well.... Most charges were never formally investigated, and in only a few cases was official evidence submitted to a legal tribunal (usually after torture had been employed). The church repeatedly denounced such allegations... It was well known that Jewish law prohibits the consumption of blood. No charge has withstood historical scrutiny. No alleged victim remains in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints. Yet some notion of the blood libel accusation has endured to the present." Dundes, p. 340, lists authors who have attempted to catalog blood libel cases; it seems clear that there have been at least 175 trials for this sort of thing over the years, and probably more than that.
We should note that it wasn't just the Jews who were accused of using human blood for medical purposes; the Middle English romance "Amis and Amiloun" has one friend sacrifice his children's blood to heal the other of leprosy.
Joseph Jacobs claimed (Dundes, pp. 47-48) that "human sacrifice has been unknown since Israel since at least the time of the Judges, and the Levitical legislation restricted sacrifices of any kind whatever to the Temple. Since the destruction of the Temple, therefore, no sacrifice has been performed by the Jews...." This is wrong in detail (it was Deuteronomy that restricted sacrifice entirely to the Temple, not Leviticus, and we know that sacrifices were done elsewhere before the Deuteronomic rules were adopted. There were emphatically human sacrifices in Israel after the time of the Judges; even if you ignore David's murder of the sons of Saul in 2 Samuel 21, at least two Kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manassah "made [their sons] pass through the fire," i.e. sacrificed them (2 Kings 16:3, 21:6). And if Jacobs doesn't consider the killing of the passover lamb a sacrifice, I, as a semi-vegetarian, sure do), but even though he slightly over-states his case, he's basically correct.
The Jewish rules about blood perhaps deserve documentation. The word "blood" is used hundreds of times in the Bible. My concordance to the New Revised Standard Version has 11 in Genesis alone, 27 in Exodus, 85 in Leviticus, 13 in Numbers, 18 in Deuteronomy. The largest share of these references are to sacrificial blood, but it is always animal blood! As early as Genesis 9:4, we read that one must not eat "flesh with its life, that is, its blood." Leviticus 3:17, 7:26, 17:10-12, 19:26, and Deuteronomy 12:16, 23, 15:23 also forbid consuming blood; this is a strong prohibition with absolutely no exceptions.
The blood libel story -- that Jews killed Christians for ritual purposes -- is old; Chaucer/Boyd one version back to the early Church historian Socrates around 418 C.E. (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 9; also Dundes, p. 10-11), though Brown, on p. 456 of Bryan/Dempster, says that this was not an instance of ritual murder (it was an "ordinary" murder). The false tale of Jews using Christian blood in a Jewish rite is Thompson motif V361; though false, it was often used as a justification for attacks on Jews.
And even that is not the earliest instance of an accusation against the Jews of ritual murder; apparently Poseidonius originated a charge that Antiochus IV, when he invaded the Jewish Temple in the 160s B.C.E., found a man there who was being fattened up for ritual cannibalism (Dundes, p. 7). Josephus repeated, and indignantly refuted, this story in Against Apion (Josephus/Thackeray, pp. 328fffff.; II.8 in the standard chapter numbering. This particular passage exists only in the Latin translation, Since Josephus is far better known than Poseidonius or Apion or others who repeated the tale, Josephus's denial ironically made the story available to western Christianity, though Against Apion wasn't widely known in the west compared to Josephus's other works; Dundes, pp. 8-9).
Although such tales are old, Dundes, p. 12, does not believe either of these versions would have been known in Norwich or to Thomas of Monmouth, who introduced the Blood Libel in England and inspired the story of Hugh of Lincoln.
Hugh was not the first of the alleged English victims of Jewish malice. It is generally agreed that William of Norwich was the prototype. ("Moreover, since the blood libel legend seemingly came later in time than the more general ritual murder, we may be able to do more than speculate when the first case of blood libel occurred. Much evidence seems to point to the events surrounding the death of William of Norwich, which took place in 1144. Many of those who have written on blood libel believe this to be the first documented instance of such an accusation"; Dundes, p. 3.) According to the account that has come down to us, William was an apprentice leatherworker who was lured into a Jewish banker's home, where he was tortured and murdered, after which his body was hung up in a forest, where it was eventually found.
At least, this is the story transmitted by one Thomas of Monmouth, who in the 1170s released a book "The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich," Thomas's story is divided into seven "books," two about William's life and five about miracles associated with William. The book was not particularly popular; only one copy survives (Rose, p. 2), though a short summary wound up in a continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Dundes, pp. 4-5). Dundes, p. 6, reports that "Thomas of Monmouth's evidence is too unreliable or insufficient to determine with any certainty who killed William," and adds on p. 15 that the presentation is carefully set up to convince us of the Jews' guilt even in the absence of proper evidence. But it created a pattern that others could, and did, follow.
The Jewish communities in England were still new in the thirteenth century; there seem to have been none before the Norman Conquest (Cannon. p. 532). Prejudice against them was strong. There were apparently about 200 Jews in Norwich in 1144 (in a town of about 5000), making it one of the largest communities in the country -- perhaps second only to London. This even though they had only started settling there a few decades earlier (Rose, p. 6; Dundes, p. 12, repeats a claim that, until 1135, all Jews in England lived in London).
The body of William was found dead in March 1144 (according to Rose; others put it two or three years later. Dundes, p. 13, agrees with the 1144 date and says that William was twelve years old. This is important, because Magalene Schultz, on pp. 273-303, tries to link the Blood Libel to infanticide. But William, although not an adult, was old enough to be an independent worker. It is not a case of child murder). Apparently several people had seen the corpse before it was reported, because no one wanted to face the accusations that arose when one found a dead body (Rose, p. 13). Eventually it was brought to the attention of a forester, who had to take notice, but no one knew who did it (Rose, p. 15). Nothing much seems to have been done at the time; the young man's uncle wanted the Jews prosecuted, but the sheriff did nothing; possibly he thought the death a suicide and didn't want to take a firm stand (Rose, pp. 20-21).
It wasn't all that unusual to find people killed horribly at this time. This was the reign of King Stephen (reigned 1135-1154), when England fell into civil war and anarchy. Locals often formed protection rings which might commit brutal violence against their neighbors (Rose, p. 18). Probably a lot of people thought that William had made someone angry with him. There are disputes about the dating of what follows (Rose, p. 243), but Rose thinks wasn't until 1150, six years after the event, that Brother Thomas took up the event.
He was an effective propagandist. Even though there seem to have been no miracles associated with William at the time when Thomas came along in 1150, he took charge of the case. Thomas had William's body moved and became his sacrist, caring for his relics and tooting the horn for canonization (Rose, p. 23) -- at that time, still a pretty informal process. It probably helped that his family seems to have been fairly significant in the community (Rose, p. 27).
William, who had lost his father at an early age (Rose, p. 36), seems to have been a competent leatherworker, but he took a job working for the cook of the Archdeacon of Norwich, hoping to use a place in the Archdeacon's household as a means to advancement (Rose, p. 29). Rose, p. 38, thinks that William spoke both English and Anglo-Norman, and could read some Latin, and so could translate English for the Anglo-Norman speaking Jews. There seems to have been no reason for the Jews to murder him; he was probably useful to them. There was apparently no direct evidence against them at the time. Much of Brother Thomas's "evidence" consisted of visions that he had (Dundes, pp. 24-25) -- which is revealing no matter whether Thomas truly had the visions or made them up....
At minimum, Brother Thomas seems to have made up the crucifixion allegation, and his evidence was very thin. He claimed that only William's left and and foot were nailed, the other two being tied. But this was based on an "examination" of the body conducted long after William died, so the marks on the body must have been much altered by decay; according to Dundes, p. 29, "what Thomas unintentionally reveals is that no one could have known from the wounds that William had been crucified." Dundes, p. 32, further points out that Thomas's Book 2 is an indignant defense of his claims that William was a martyr, proving that there was a lot of skepticism, and also suggesting that Thomas must have included every scrap of feeble evidence he had, because he was trying so hard to prove that it wasn't all an angry delusion on his part.
Rose thinks nothing much have come of this but for the case of one Simon de Novers, a knight who had taken out a loan from a Jew to go on the Second Crusade and had come back flat broke and unable to repay the loan (Rose devotes about thirty pages, starting on p. 61, to his story). Apparently the evidence against de Novers was overwhelming, so the defense decided to turn the tables: They would claim that the Jew who had lent de Novers the money was the leader of a Jewish gang which had murdered William of Norwich (Rose, pp. 80-81). Norwich was not a rich diocese (Rose, p. 55); creating a cardboard saint could be profitable; so could trying to extract money from the Jews. It was perhaps in light of that that the Bishop of Norwich became involved in the case. This even though the evidence against the Jewish lender was very thin indeed: hearsay evidence from a dead man and two extremely tainted witnesses (Rose, p. 82. The dead man was a priest named Aelward, who on his deathbed, five years after William's death claimed to have seen Jews with William's body; Rose, p. 41. And even Aelward did not actually testify to them murdering him).
The defense tricks worked: the trial of de Novers was suspended, never to be resumed (Rose, pp. 88-89). It was more a mistrial than an acquittal, but de Novers was off the hook.
The case soon established another precedent: In 1150, the diocese started reporting that people were seeing visions of William and keeping track of relics (Rose, p. 67). A cult was born. And a script had been established for blaming unsolved murders on Jews in England. (Although William's tale differs in one very important regard from most of the cases we will consider hereafter: it is not a Miracle of the Virgin -- though the Norwich establishment apparently tried to tie him to Mary; Rose, pp. 104-105.) The script, in fact, was the only thing about the trial to be remembered; the attempts by Norwich priory to promote the cult of "St. William" were a flop (Rose, p. 99) -- proof yet again that canonization is generally the result of maybe 10% actual holiness and 90% public relations. (William, to be sure, lacked both. According to Rose, p. 111, although five of the seven books of Brother Thomas's history were devoted to William's miracles, it sounds like most of them are the typical sort in such cases: "I prayed to William and my headache went away" and the like, plus some casting out of demons; the only one that sounds like it meant anything was the cure of a girl born blind and mute. Rose, p. 120, quotes another historian who says that the list of miracles attributed to William were "scraping the barrel"; I heartily agree.)
Porter, p. 116, says that Thomas of Monmouth was a monk of Norwich's Benedictine priory, and wrote his "history" in 1172-1173; Porter also says that William Thurby, Bishop of Norwich from 1144 to 1172, was convinced the boy was a saint. The whole thing, frankly, sounds like the result of psychosis on the part of either Thomas of Monmouth or of Thurby.
The conclusion on p. 36 of Dundes is that "if Thomas's Life of WIlliam will never reveal who killed poor little William, it is rich and rewarding evidence for something much more important, the creation of the crucifixion accusation, for the Life was written by the myth's creator."
Despite the absurdity of it all, "copycat cults" (Rose's term) started in Gloucester around 1168, twice in France in 1170/1171, and in 1181 in Bury St. Edmunds (Rose, p. 127). When in 1168 a body was pulled from the river near Gloucester (Bryan/Dempster, p. 456) which appeared to have been cooked on a spit (!), the locals, instead of looking for a psychopath, blamed the Jews (Rose, p. 133); they were apparently pressured to lend money to Richard le Clare, Earl of Pembroke (known as "Strongbow") for his invasion of Ireland (Rose, p. 139fff.). The story of Harold of Gloucester, even though there were no miracles associated with him (Rose, p. 144), did add one significant detail that would occur in many future versions: the association of the body with water (Rose, p. 143), and perhaps the theme of the water refusing to retain the body, found with some modifications in the ballad. Harold's case also started an association with the Virgin Mary that would become very important in later versions of the legend (Rose, p. 146).
Rose, pp. 152-153, suggests that in 1170 the monks of Norwich tried a fundraising tour in France with some of William's relics, resulting in the spread of the ritual murder stories there. In Blois, some thirty Jews were charged, and some of them burned alive (Rose, pp. 162-163). Rose, p. 171, says that this converted Jews from aliens to, in effect, heretics -- a much more dangerous status.
Little is now known of the case of Robert of St. Edmund's in 1181 (Rose, p. 187), but the case seems to have helped inspire the pogroms of 1190. And it added another new element: Robert's body had been cast into a well (Rose, p. 194), a thoroughly unlikely notion (people were not entirely ignorant of sanitation back then!) that would nonetheless recur.
The case of Little Hugh is only one of many echoes of the cases of William and Harold. Among the analogues of Hugh's tale Benet 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. Ridley summarizes some of the many claims against the Jews, and on p. 172 reports on "27 analogues of [Chaucer's] Prioress's Tale and almost as many which dealt with Hugh of Lincoln and William of Norwich."
For some reason, the idea of Jewish ritual murders seems to have been especially deeply rooted in England; Langmuir, p. 463, says that, during the thirteenth century, five shrines were established to children allegedly ritually murdered, and four of them were English -- though he actually lists five English victims on p. 478: Hugh, plus "William of Norwich, Harold of Gloucester, Robert of Bury St. Edmunds, and the poor anonymous infant of St. Paul's."
Although the Blood Libel was so well-known that it was still being brought up against Jews as late as the twentieth century, it's unlikely that we would remember Hugh of Lincoln were it not for Chaucer. Although Chaucer makes clear that the "Prioress's Tale" is not a tale of Hugh of Lincoln, he does connect them, and Chaucer/Boyd, p. 19, mentions a speculation that the Tale was written to celebrate a visit by Richard II to Lincoln Cathedral, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There is a certain depressing sense to this, because there was a lot of anti-Semitism in the legends told about Mary at this time (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 20). And, since there were no Jews in England at this time, Chaucer had limited experience to teach him better.
Chaucer/Boyd, p. 19, reminds us that Chaucer had ties to Lincolnshire, though he never resided there: His wife Philippa was the sister of Katherine Swynford, who later became the mistress and wife of John of Gaunt, but who before that was married to Thomas Swynford of Lincolnshire. Katherine's burial site, in fact, is close to Hugh's tomb.
Langmuir, pp. 459-463, and Chaucer/Boyd, pp. 10-11, summarize Carlton Brown's thematic analysis of "The Prioress's Tale" and its analogs; Brown's own summary of an earlier paper is on pp. 447-451 of Bryan/Dempster. Brown has 33 items, grouped into three types. All have, in essence, four parts: The young boy (1) somehow offends a group of Jews, who (2) murder him -- but (3) he survives in some form to bring charges against the Jewish murderers, who (4) are punished.
Brown's "A" type has 13 representatives, but very few of them English. The boy passes a Jewish street singing "Gauda Maria." A Jew or Jews kill him and bury him. The boy's mother hear his voice by the Jew's door and force their way in. (Thompson V254.7, "Murdered boy still sings 'Ave' after his death") They dig up his body alive. Often the Jews are converted as a result. This is the early form of the legend, which "must have been in existence well before the year 1200." In other words, it predates Hugh; it could have influenced the Hugh of Lincoln legend, but was not itself influenced by the English event.
Brown's "B" type has ten representatives (half of them from British Library manuscripts). The boy is now a professional chorister. The Jews themselves hear the boy singing (perhaps from the choir, where the Virgin has restored him); the boy's mother plays no part. This causes the Jews to confess and convert.
Brown's "C" type includes Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale," and most of the versions are from England. Brown counts ten versions, including Chaucer's. Typically the boy sings "Alma redemptoris mater." When the boy is murdered, the body is thrown into a "jakes." This version does not see the boy come back to life, but has his dead body continue singing through his funeral. The earliest version of this was copied around the time of Little Hugh's death, and it was not the original, which makes it nearly certain that this version too is actually older than Hugh's death (Bryan/Dempster, pp. 451-453).
We note that all three variants feature singing, and the child speaking after death. All involve miracles -- typically Miracles of the Virgin, a very specific medieval tale-type.
"The Prioress's Tale" and this song share the middle parts (the murder and the boy's survival) -- but the first part is quite different (in the "Tale," the boy goes about singing a religious song in a way that I'd find obnoxious, too; in the ballad, his ball goes lands on Jewish property; also, "The Prioress's Tale" is *not* a tale of ritual murder; Chaucer/Boyd, p. 17). The final parts, the hunt for the boy and the punishment, varies greatly between versions -- both of the song and the miracle tale.
Chaucer/Boyd, p. 24, says of the child's school in the Tale, "The clergeon is plainly a beginner in his first year of school. He is studying from a primer, necessarily a first book considering his age and naïveté, though a primer of the time was not at all what a primer is today.... In the Middle Ages a primer (primarium) was what is now called a book of hours, a manual containing the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, the Office of the Dead, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Litany of the Saints, and Commendations of Souls [plus other matter]." Hence the boy -- who was learning to sing and to read, or at least to pronounce, Latin -- would have found his song to the Virgin in his schoolbook.
Chaucer's tale is not connected with England; it is set in "Asie" (Asia). It doesn't really have any Asian color (supposedly the setting has faint similarities to Bruges; Chaucer/Boyd, p. 21), but it doesn't matter if the setting is accurate; the point is, Chaucer explicitly denied that the events happened in England!
The question is, how anti-Semitic was Chaucer himself? Many scholars now think "The Prioress's Tale" is a satire (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 32; Dundes, p. 92, gives a list of scholars who addressed this topic, including the well-known ballad scholar Albert B. Friedman) because the Prioress's attitude is contrary to the teachings of the Church, as Chaucer should have known. Her tale certainly immediately precedes the undeniable satire of "Sir Thopas." And she is definitely a problem character. Her brooch, e.g., says "Amor Vincit Omnia," "Love conquers all" -- the General Prologue, line 162. She would probably say she was invoking 1 Corinthians 13, but 1 Corinthians in the Latin Vulgate uses "caritas," not "amor," as the word for "love." She's actually quoting one of Virgil's Eclogues. And Chaucer teased, lines 125-126, that she knew only the French of "Stratford at the Bowe, For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknown."
The great ballad scholar George Lyman Kittredge was of the opinion -- Kittredge, p. 175 -- that "Of all the Canterbury Pilgrims none is more sympathetically conceived or more delicately portrayed than Madame Eglantine, the prioress" -- but of course Kittredge lived at a time when anti-Semitism was still basically acceptable. I really don't agree; the Prioress is a rather silly woman, who believes in her Catholicism but is clearly in the wrong job, and is full of care for her lap dog, and is so delicate that even a dead mouse troubles her, but little concerned with the poor and troubled of the world. She frankly strikes me as very "pwecious" but not particularly moral.
Kittredge talked about her "thwarted motherhood" (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 42), hinting that she sympathized with the mother who lost her boy. I think this is true at least in the sense that the Prioress would clearly have been happier as a nobleman's wife. I suspect that Chaucer's prioress does not live up to her vows very well, and should be viewed in that light; her tale is the tale of a hypocrite, or at least of someone not very bright.
Her opinion of Jews is also contrary to church teachings. Chaucer/Boyd, pp. 31-51, summarizes at great length the attempts to address what Chaucer was doing. Sadly, I think most of them protest too much; no one in the Canterbury Pilgrimage points out the problems with what the Prioress says. The best that can be said for Chaucer is that his attitudes toward Jews would be based on hostile stories he was told rather than actual experience, because of lack of Jews in England.
(Perhaps the best way to understand Chaucer's tale, and this song, is for people of European descent to substitute "Muslim" for "Jew" and see how offended they feel....)
Child (who was a noteworthy Chaucer scholar) noted the parallels between the song and the legend, but doesn't devote much space to it; he seems to consider the items to have mixed elements but to have independent parts as well. I agree.
Chaucer/Boyd, p. 5, suggests that much of the Prioress's Tale is based on the liturgy for Holy Innocents' Day, or Childermas; p. 6 mentions other liturgical sources close to the Tale. On pp. 15-17, ChaucerBoyd quotes a line from one of these liturgies, "Let the miserable Jews be ashamed who say that Christ was born of the seed of Joseph"; one can see why Jews would resent this! None of these parallels (such as a citation of Psalm 8) occur in the song. Nor is there much evidence of the Jews being relegated to a ghetto, as was true in many countries in the Middle Ages, though it could be perhaps argued that the song hints that they congregate together.
WHAT THE CHRONICLES SAY ABOUT HUGH
So what do our sources actually tell us about what actually happened to Hugh?
Langmuir, p. 464, says, "According to the Burton annals, Hugh disappeared on 31 July, was kept alive for twenty-six days, and killed on Friday, 27 August; his body was discovered on Sunday 29 August; and the king arrived in London about 29 September. The Anglo-Norman ballad of Hugh of Lindoln, which demonstrated greater knowledge of local detail than any other source, also puts his disappearance about 31 July. Little Hugh's day in the calendar of the Use of Lincoln was established as 27 August, the presumed date of his martyrdom, which indicated the body was found after 27 August. And Henry III in fact arrived in Lincoln on 4 October. One of the most significant features of the affair is that a month elapsed between Hugh's disappearance on 31 July and the discovery of his body on 29 August, and that another month passed before the king intervened on 4 October."
The Burton account, according to Langmuir, pp. 465-466, says that Hugh was starved for 26 days before many Jews were summoned and he was executed with torture.
The Anglo-Norman ballad mentioned by Langmuir is described by Joseph Jacobs (who wrote the account reprinted on pp. 41-71 of Dundes) as follows: "The French ballad was published in 1834 by M. Francisque Michel, from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale. From its diction and meter it was clearly written within a very few years of the martyrdom" (Dundes, p. 60). And yet it has peculiarities such as calling Copin, the Jew who confessed to the crime, "Jopin" (Dundes, p. 61). According to Chaucer/Boyd, p. 18, the ballad's editor thought it must have been written by 1272, since it mentioned Henry III (who reigned 1316-1272) as still being king.
Langmuir, p. 464, says "The English fantasy of Jewish ritual murder by crucifixion achieved its classic form in 1255 because of Henry III's intervention and because little Hugh's story was vividly described by Matthew Paris, the most famous English thirteen-century historian. His was probably the version known to Chaucer, Marlowe, Percy, and Lamb. And because of Matthew's fame, his version has received first attention from modern historians and deflected them from other evidence." Which is unfortunate, because Paris seems to have been a very unreliable chronicler. A translation of his account is given on pp. 43-46 of Dundes; it is indeed dramatic, and sorely lacking in balance.
Matthew Paris disagrees with almost all the information from the Buron annals -- indeed, Langmuir, p. 467 accuses him of fabricating much of his account, or taking it from other legends.
Joseph Jacobs came to a conclusion unlike that of the chronicles: "Little Hugh, the eight-year old son of a widow, Beatrice, accidentally fell into a cesspool attached to a Jew's house on 31 July 1255. The body putrefied for twenty-six days and rose to the surface to dismay Jews who had assembled from all over England to celebrate a marriage in an important family. They surreptitiously dropped the body in a well away from their houses where it was discovered on 29 August" (summarized by Langmuir, p. 461; cf. Chaucer/Boyd, p. 18. The full account can be seen on pp. 64-65 of Dundes). Jacobs noted that the blame attached to the Jews had all been based on the dubious testimony of a single Jew, Copin (Dundes, p. 46) -- which sounds suspiciously like the revelations around Wiliam of Norwich, which also came from dubious sourcesHarvey, pp. 119-120, gives the following account of the pogroms that took place in the reigns of Henry III (1216-1272) and Edward I (1272-1307):
"Edward was not satisfied with this state of affairs, for the exorbitant interest charged for money [by the Jews, who alone were allowed to lend at interest at the time] had become notorious.... In 1275, he enacted laws forbidding usury and encouraging Jews to live by normal trade and labour. Unfortunately the Jews did not respond, and succeeded in charging even higher rates than before, and also formed a ring for clipping the coinage.... Adding to the economic difficulties [blamed on the Jews]... was a series of most sinister crimes committed against Christian children, including murder (allegedly ritual) and forcible circumcision. Whatever we may think of the evidence in favour of 'ritual murder'... a number of instances of mysterious child-murder undoubtedly did occur in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England, at least ten being well-documented between 1144 and 1290.
"The evidence against individual Jews was considered conclusive in the case of Hugh of Lincoln (Little Saint Hugh), murdered in 1255, when, after exhaustive trials before the justices, later adjourned before Henry III in person, certain Jews were convicted and hanged."
Even this is probably going too far. Prestwich, pp. 345-346, says, "There was undoubtedly very considerable prejudice against the Jews in England. There were stories of ritual child-murder and torture, which, although they now appear groundless on the basis of the recorded evidence, were generally believed. The most famous was that of the death of Little St Hugh in 1255, but there were others. The chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds recorded the crucifixion of a boy by the Jews at Northampton." (Rather absurd, since crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish, means of execution.)
Prestwich's cautions are quite proper -- given that there were only a few thousand Jews in England at the time (Prestwich, p. 344, estimates 3000; Morris, p. 86, suggests 5000), they could hardly have committed all the crimes charged against them. Despite that, they suffered severely at the hands of Edward I, being charged (along with goldsmiths) with being coin-clippers in 1278 (Prestwich, p. 245; Morris, p. 171, believes that Edward killed half the male Jews in England at the time).
"Between 1263 and 1267 there were massacres in, among other places, London, Canterbury, Winchester, Lincoln, Bristol, Nottingham and Worcester. Angry, fearful Montfortian knights [who had been on the wrong side of the civil wars of the period and were subject to large fines]... struck down their [Jewish] creditors in the hope of erasing the evidence of their indebtedness. The restoration of peace [after Henry III and the future Edward I defeated Simon de Montfort] had brought an end to these attacks, but the problems associated with Jewish credit remained" (Morris, p. 88).
I do note with interest that Mortimer, p. 50, declares that the "most famous of all the great Jewish capitalists was Adam of Lincoln" (died 1186, near the end of the reign of Henry II).
One part of the prejudice against Jews that seems to be accurate is the charge of exorbitant interest. On p. 191 Stenton mentions a calculation that their average rate of interest was 43% (per year), with some instances in excess of 60%. The blame for this does not lie entirely with the Jews; the monarchy in effect was taking a cut, in the form of high licensing fees on the Jews (Stenton, p. 194; Morris, p. 86; Chaucer/Boyd, p. 21, quotes Lilian Winstanley: "The system may be best summarized by saying that the Jews were permitted to fleece thoroughly the people of the realm on condiiton that the king fleeced them"). So the Jews had to charge enough to live on *and* the pay the royal bribe. (I would love to have heard, say, Richard I explain how that was different from charging interest himself, but of course Richard would never answer to me.)
So, by the 1270s, you have accounts of ritual murders, you have charges of usury -- and you have demonstrated prejudice. No wonder Edward I felt it safe to move against them. Indeed, Edward I had gone after the Jews even before he became king in 1272; in the late 1260s, as he was trying to raise money for a crusade, he proposed anti-Jewish legislation as a fundraising method (Morris, p. 85). His father Henry III had also put Jews in a bad position by allowing unscrupulous barons to buy up loans and foreclose them, in effect stealing land at bargain prices (Morris, p. 87). It not only harmed the Jews, it created unfortunate knock-on effects in the financial system. When Edward came to the throne, he destroyed the livelihood of many of the Jews by forbidding moneylending -- theoretically opening other jobs to them, but not supporting the change (Morris, pp. 125-126, who thinks Edward tried to protect the Jews, but I see no sign of it). Then he expelled them in 1290; the order, sent July 18, said they had to be gone by November 1: "For what was very definitely the final time, the Jews were made to pay the price for the King of England's insolvency" (Morris, p. 227). Bigoted as this was, the rest of the people liked it, and voted Edward generous subsidies as a result (Morris, p. 228).
All of this was easy for the kings to do, because Jews were not, properly speaking, citizens of England, but were rather wards of the state (Chaucer/Boyd, p.22).
Powicke, who devotes roughly eight times as much space to the reign of Henry III as does (say) Harvey, never mentions Hugh or the trials which followed, although he does note (p. 322) Edward I's anti-usury law of 1275 -- and its follow-up, the law of 1290 which expelled the Jews. (Stenton, p. 197, cynically notes that the Jews were no longer "useful" by then -- i.e. the crown had extorted so much money that they were no longer a significant source of revenue. Prestwich, p. 343, observes that Edward managed to make money even on the exiling of the Jews, because it let him wring an exaction from the clergy in return for the expulsion. Prestwich on p. 346 says that the expulsion was not officially reversed until 1656, although many Jews were tolerated by then -- it is said that Elizabeth I's physician was Jewish.)
And all so that Edward could go on Crusade and fight the people who belonged to yet a third religion.
That a boy named Hugh did die and get buried in Lincoln seems clear; there is a body in his crypt (a non-trivial point; Jacobs, on p. 55 of Dundas, and Dundes himself, on p. 162, note an instance of one of these anti-Jewish pogroms where the Jews were accused of murder when no one was killed! -- the alleged murder victim had never existed. This was "the La Guardia affair" -- Dundes, p. 165 -- which took place in 1490, so after Hugh of Lincoln, and after Chaucer, but surely before this song). Moreover, when Hugh's tomb was opened in 1791, the remains found there were estimated to be from someone who died at about the age of eight (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 17; Jacobs, on p. 57 of Dundes, gives a sketch of the skeleton and notes that, however Hugh died, none of his bones were broken).
Although we know that a boy died, that doesn't mean the Jews of Lincoln were responsible. Jacobs concluded that Hugh, who was the eight-year-old son of a widow named Beatrice, accidentally fell into a cesspit near a Jewish residents on July 31, 1255. The body was not discovered for 26 days, when a group of Jews gathered to celebrate a wedding. Their one crime was that, having found the dead body, they dropped it down a well at some distance from where the boy had died, where it was discovered on August 29. No doubt, given the state of the body, there was some possibility that Hugh had been murdered (although there is no reason to suspect it) -- but even if he had been murdered, there is no evidence that the Jews were responsible (summarized from Chaucer/Boyd, p. 18).
Langmuir has more information on this account. On p. 461 he noted that "It was discovered in 1929 that the famous well where the body was supposedly thrown had been built by a workman then living to augment the antiquarian value of the house." So much for the well....
Furthermore, even if all the murders blamed on Jews were actually their fault, it doesn't mean they were guilty of exceptional crimes. Ten unexplained child-murders in a century and a half is a rate far below what we experience today (and, frankly, I would be tempted to look at the Catholic clergy, not the Jews, for killing the poor children, given what we now know about the Catholic Church and young boys...). And murder was more common in the Middle Ages than today.
Langmuir seems to say that, while a boy, thought to be Little Hugh, did turn up dead, the only connection that can be shown to the Jews is that they saw the body. The reason this particular account became so widely known is because the case was investigated by John de Lexinton (Langmuir, pp. 468-469), and Lexinton was several times Henry III's Keeper of the Privy Seal, and his brother Henry was the local bishop, so their actions were important and widely remembered. And Henry de Lexinton had reason to promote the story that blamed the Jews (Langmuir, pp. 476-477).
The Burton account says that Lexinton examined a Jewish priest named "Jopin"; the Waverly account calls him "Copin" (Langmuir, p. 465). (Could this be an error for "Cohen," the title/family name of the Jewish priestly family? Langmuir, p. 477, says that "Copin" was the first Jew executed, which would make sense if he were a Cohen and, in that sense, the spokesman and symbol of the community.)
In any case, Copin confessed to just about the story of the Hugh legend (Langmuir, p. 478). It's not obvious why, since they executed him anyway. He probably knew what John of Lexinton wanted to hear, but what was the point of implicating his community? One has to suspect he was tortured, and gave the interrogators what they wanted to try to end the pain. But it obviously didn't help him; it just got everyone else in trouble. In consequence of this, 18 other Jews were executed (Langmuir, p. 478) and 71 more Jews were condemned to death but eventually set free (Langmuir, p. 479).
It is Langmuir's opinion that Lexinton was responsible for most of the charges against the Jews, for inciting Henry III against them -- and so, ultimately, for making the story of Hugh famous: "Whatever road we take to Lincoln in October 1255, we meet John de Lexinton at the crossroads by Copin's gallows. We shall never know whether he himself believed the tale he told the king.... [H]e supported an accusation that was practically unsupported by evidence. Hugh's body had been found in a place that did not inculpate Jews, and nothing but the suggestions of neighbours and children, proffered amid the suspicions aroused by the presence of an unusual number of Jews connected Hugh in any way with Jews. We may be sure that had there been any solid evidence that Hugh had last been seen entering a Jew's house, there would have been decisive action against Jews long before the King's arrival two months later" (Langmuir, p. 481). Langmuir believes Lexinton interrogated many Jews before finally finding Copin "the weak reed." This let him publicize a story which, whether he believed it or not, strengthened his family's position and the position of his brother, Bishop of Lincoln. The fact that Henry III employed such a man says a lot about Henry, widely considered a poor king.
Langmuir, p. 482, xonxluswa, "John de Lexinton died in January, 1257, and his elegant learning will not be described in any history of mediaeval thought, yet his tale of young Hugh of Lincoln became a strand in English literature and a support for irrational beliefs about Jews from 1255 to Asuchwitz. It is time he received his due credit." (Including, I would say, for a part in the creation of this song.)
So: What is the relationship between the story of Hugh of Lincoln, this song, and Chaucer, three of the types of the tale of Jewish murder?
The link to "The Prioress's Tale" is undeniable (Percy, in fact, referred readers to the Tale to learn the ending of the story; Fowler, p. 267), since lines 684-686 of the Tale (Chaucer/Benson, p. 212) 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." (It's line 1874 in Chaucer/Boyd, p. 165, with discussion on pp. 166-167. To give Chaucer the only excuse we can -- and it a very feeble one -- he lived in an England where Jews were barred, and so perhaps had never met an English-speaking Jew!) I personally don't see much connection, except thematic, to The Jew of Malta.
But the link to "The Prioress's Tale" is only partial, although it has been affirmed by scholars going all the way back to Percy.
For starters, the story of Hugh of Lincoln doesn't seem to involve a Jew's daughter.
In any case, the story of the murdered boy and the Miracle of the Virgin is first found in the Stella Maris of c. 1248-49 -- a dating which, if correct, places it before the death of Hugh of Lincoln! (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 64), which certainly should end any link between the Jews and Hugh.
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. Runciman, 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.)
Lest we think we've entirely outgrown this, Frey/Thompson, p. 56, note that the ritual murder charge was bandied about at the time of the Mary Phagan case (for background, see the notes to "Mary Phagan" [Laws F20]), and on p. 57 Frey/Thompson mention the Beilis case in Russia, where in the early twentieth century there were attempts to blame the entire Jewish race for a murder they did not commit. Dundes has a long section on that particular incident. (This case would go on to inspire some of Sholom Aleichem's Tevye stories, hence playing a part in the musical Fiddler on the Roof; Solomon, pp. 33-34.)
The fame of "Little Hugh of Lincoln," who is sometimes called a saint, may be by confusion with another Hugh of Lincoln, the bishop of that city (died 1200 and canonized in 1220, according to DictSaints, p. 116). Chaucer/Boyd, p. 166, cites William Thynne as already pointing out this confusion in response to Speght's 1589 edition of Chaucer. Hassall, p. 103, indirectly affirms the confusion by warning that we should not confuse St. Hugh of Avalon, St. Hugh of Wells and Lincoln, or little St. Hugh of Lincoln. Warren, p. 70, says that "Hugh was famous for his saintly life, his great work as a pastor, his sharp tongue, and his pet swan. He had been one of the great characters of the 12th century episcopate." Indeed, he was regarded as a standard for other English bishops -- one they rarely met.
Kerr, p. 171, says that "The key [to the success of the city and diocese of Lincoln] lies with one man, Sir Hugh of Avalon, who was a competent and respected bishop during his episcopacy in 1186-1200 and, after his death, a popular author."
DictSaints, p. 116, says that upon being appointed bishop (a post he had to be pressured into taking) he "quickly restored clerical discipline, revived schools, and helped to rebuild the cathedral with his own hands."
Bishop Hugh also became the subject of legend -- e.g. Jones, p. 93, mentions a story (for which he does not cite a source) that he "was helped by an angel who cut off his manhood to relieve him of impure desires." (I must say that this strikes me as unlikely -- there were reports that the great scholar Origen had castrated himself, as did members of the Slavic Skoptsy sect, but this was not a common Christian behavior, and the Jewish Law explicitly forbids priests from having major mutilations.) Hazlitt, p. 333, says that he was the patron of shoemakers.
In the context, it is ironic to note that OxfordCompanion, p. 495, explicitly notes that Bishop Hugh "condemned the persecution of Jews which spread throughout England in 1190-1." Similarly DictSaints, p. 116: "He denounced the persecution of the Jews, repeatedly forcing armed mobs to release their victims, and was unafraid to correct both Henry II and King Richard the Lionheart."
Percy thought that this song was based on an "Italian" legend (Chaucer/Boyd, p. 28) -- which is an ironic reversal, since Chaucer knew Italian and had been on embassies in that part of the world, whereas this song gives every evidence of being homegrown.
The bottom line on all of this: Clearly this song arises out of the same core of tradition as "The Prioress's Tale" and all of its anti-Semitic parallels. Both the name "Hugh" and the general plot suggest it. But this is not directly descended from Chaucer's tale or its direct relatives. What was remembered was the name "Hugh" and the idea of a Christian boy murdered by Jews, but the details of what (didn't) happen were lost.
OTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE SONG
Note that most of the full versions of the song end with Hugh asking to have a Bible at his head and Prayer-book at his feet (cf, Dundes, p. 75). This shows pretty definitively that the song dates from well after the time of the real Hugh. Apart from the fact that no books seem to have been buried with the Hugh, the real Hugh died before the invention of printing, so it is most unlikely that his family could have afforded -- or been permitted to have -- two books, one of them a Bible. It is unlikely that he could read. And a prayer-book strongly implies a Protestant religion anyway. In other words, the Hugh of this song cannot be the actual Hugh who is buried at Lincoln but almost certainly wasn't killed by Jews anyway.
I wonder a little if the Bible and Prayer-book are also intended to protect against Jewish magic, or are another way of condemning the Jews.
Brian Bebbington, on p. 77 of Dundes, reminds us that Hugh was lured by an apple -- as tradition says that Eve was tempted. (In fact Genesis 3 refers merely to a "fruit," not a specific kind, and at least some scholars think it was a pomegranite. But it became an apple in folklore.) On pp. 86-87 of Dundes, Bebbington comes up with a lot of Cabalistic and numerological connections he sees in the song; I very much doubt that anyone who actually sang the song would have known any of this falderal (e.g. how many traditional singers would know the gematrial value of the Hebrew word for "life"?)
Dundes, p. 73, also says that this ballad was cited in James Joyce's Ulysses.
Dundes also, on pp. 350-353, lists a whole bunch of psychoanalytical explanations for the Blood Libel legend. These share the usual traits of psychoanalytical/Freudian explanations: they are garbage explanations based on a garbage theory. That there is a psychological explanation for the legend (note that I distinguish PSYCHOLOGY from PSYCHOANALYSIS) is clearly true, but it's probably sufficient to explain it on the basis of cultural racism.
Dundes, pp. 366-381, has an extensive bibliography on works related to the Blood Libel, although relatively few appear to be directly about Hugh of Lincoln. Dundes, p. 73, has a list of important journal articles about this song. - RBW
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