A Little Boy- Kennison (VT) 1932 Barry/Flanders B
[My title, replacing the generic title not found in the text. From Ancient Ballads, III; Flanders, 1963. Notes by Coffin/Flanders follow. Also published in The Green Mountain Songster, 254, and BFSSNE, 1933, Vol. 5, p. 6-7. The earlier version (recording Barry 1932) has minor verbal variations, see BFSSNE or GMS.
Flander's stanziac divisions in 1963 are incorrect. I am using GMS text. Barry notes in BFSSNE are found at the bottom of this page.
R. Matteson 2015]
Sir Hugh, or The Jew's Daughter
(Child 155)
This ballad is founded on an incident related under the year 1255 in The Annals of Waverly. Child, III, 235, summarizes it as follows:
A boy in Lincoln, named Hugh, was crucified by the Jews in contempt of Christ, with various preliminary tortures. To conceal the act from the Christians, the body, when taken from the cross, was thrown into a running stream; but the water would not endure the wrong done its maker, and immediately ejected it upon dry land. The body was then buried in the earth, but was
found above dry ground the next day. The guilty parties were now very much frightened and quite at their wit's end; as a last resort they threw the corpse into a drinking well. The body was seen floating on the water, and, upon its being drawn up, the hands and feet were found to be pierced, the head had, as it were, a crown of bloody points, and there were various other wounds: from all which it was plain that this was the work of the abominable Jews. A blind woman, touching the bier on which
the blessed martyr's corpse was carrying to the church, received her sight, and many other miracles followed. Eighteen Jews, convicted of the crime, and confessing it with their own mouths, were hanged.
It was also known to Matthew Paris, in The annals of Burton, and in many other medieval accounts. Chaucer's Prioress' Tale tells the same story, and there is an Anglo-French ballad analogue. The story has been greatly modified in the course of its history, so that in some of the modern ballad versions the religion of the murderer is not clear, and there may be no miracles associated with the crime. Coffin, 111-112, lists many of the variations in the story, which has been a favorite subject for study. See Belden, 69, for articles on themes related to Child 155, and Walter M. Hart, The English Popular Ballad (New York, 1916), 30-31, for a comparison of the Chaucerian tale and the folksong.
"Sir Hugh" is well known in America and Britain today but is not particularly common in New England. Phillips Barry, British Ballad,s from Maine, prints no text, for example. The Flanders material is close to that in Child. A is of the "Harry Hughes" (see Child N) tradition and includes both the miracle of the conversation between the mother and the dead boy and "the Bible at my head, prayer-book at my feet" ending. B, with the "Bible-prayer book" ending, but without the miraculous conversation, follows
the pattern of the most common American type, "The Jew's Daughter."
See coffin, 110-112 (American) for a start on a bibliography. Dean-Smith, 85, and Belden, 69, gives English references. There is also an interesting comparison of two texts, one from a small girl and one from her grandmother, in JAF, XLVI, 385f. Frances C. Stamper and William H. Jansen print an unusual Kentucky text, called "Water Birch," in JAF, LXXI, 16-17.
The two tunes for Child 155 are unrelated.
[A Little Boy]- Sung by Josiah Kennison of Townsend Vermont on April 6, 1932
1 A little boy about five years old
He came up and broke a staging window;
And then he up and run,
And then he up and run.
2 . . .
. . .
"Come back, come back, my little boy,
And play your game of ball."
3. "I won't, I shan't come back
And play my game of ball,
For if your mother was here,
She'd make it a bloody ball."
4 She took an apple from her pocket,
And laid it on the ground:
The little boy stooped to pick it up,
She caught him by the lily- white hand.
5 . . .
She led him from room to room,
She led him into a little dark room,
Where none could hear his call.
6 She took a penknife from her pocket,
And pierced it to his heart;
The little fresh blood came trinkling down,
So cold and dark he sleeps.
7 "Go dig my grave on yonders hill,
And there you may bury me,
Place my Bible at my head,
And my prayer book at my feet.
8 And swing my little bow arrow to my side,
And on yonders hill you may bury me."
______________________
Barry's notes BFFSSNE, 1933.
The text of this version has been printed by Mrs. Helen H. Flanders in Vermont Folk-Songs (Springfield, Mass., Sunday Union and Republican, October, 16, 1932.) The effect of the ballad as suns by Mr. Kennison, is highly dramatic. The first stanza, as a prologue, has its own air. The air used for the rest of the ballad when Mr. Kennison sang it for P. B., was an adaptation of "Yankee Doodle." Later, when he sang it for Mr. Brown's dictaphone record, he used the air to "The Two Brothers." For a similar instance of such musical dramatization, see "The False Knight on the Road," Campbell and Sharp A.
Except for a "trace," credited to Mrs. Fred W. Morse, Islesford, Maine (British Ballads-from Maine, pp. 46t-2), who recalled that the murder was not by a Jewess, this ballad has not before been found north of Connecticut, (JAFL, XXIX, 166). Mr. Kennison's text is not very close to any of Child's, but it has the unclear reference to the "bloody ball," as in Child N, an Irish-American version from New York. The "bow-arrow" stanza is unique, and may be an intrusion from Robin Hoods Death (Child, 120).
A version of Sir Hugh, learned from his mother by Mr. Clyde Fitch, was introduced by him into his play, The Girl and the Judge, first performed in the Lyceum Theatre, New York, February 24, 1902.
P. B.