A Tale Told Too Often- Ridley 1967
[A Tale Told Too Often by Florence H. Ridley; Western Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jul., 1967), pp. 153-156; Western States Folklore Society.
Barely proofed,
R. Matteson 2015]
A Tale Told Too Often
FLORENCE H. RIDLEY
IN THE FIFTH CENTURY the historian Socrates spun a tale of how at Inmestar, in Syria, a group of Jews had tortured and murdered a Christian child in mockery of Christ;[1] and ever since that remote time similar stories have continued to appear in various forms in the folklore of Western Europe and eventually in America. These stories embody the central motif of a child mutilated and usually killed by members of a minority group whom the majority, for reasons of racial or religious-- or one might suspect financial --prejudice, has cause to hate. All too often during the Middle Ages they constituted false accusations which resulted in the persecution of innocent Jews on the grounds that they had performed a kind of "ritual murder" of a child as part of their religious observances (V361).[2]
Two of the earliest versions of this story were occasioned by the deaths of William of Norwich in 1144 and Hugh of Lincoln in 1255, the first being recorded by Thomas of Monmouth at some time before 1200.[3] He tells how William, an innocent, devout boy, was chosen by the Jews, "to be made a mock of and to be put to death. . . in scorn of the Lord's passion" at their
celebration of Passover. Lured away from home by a treacherous agent of the Jews, young William was tortured, crucified, and then stabbed to death. His murderers thought at first of throwing the corpse into a cesspool, "as if to increase the shame and disgrace," but at last hid it away in a deep wood.
And there God caused a holy radiance to shine upon William's mutilated body, thus revealing its hiding place. The entire city was seized with horror and "the earnestness of. . . devout fervour. . . urging all to destroy the Jews." The embattled minority was saved from annihilation only by the intervention of John the sheriff," who had been wont to be their refuge and their
one and only protector."[4]
In the thirteenth century Matthew Paris recorded the story of little Hugh of Lincoln, which follows a pattern similar to that of William's. Hugh, a boy of eight, w as stolen away by Jews, hidden in a secret closet and fed "on milk and other childish food," apparently as a means of fattening him up to serve as a Paschal offering. Then at a religious conclave the boy was scourged and mocked, crowned with thorns, crucified, and pierced to the heart with a spear. His body was disembowelled and dropped into a well, there to be discovered by his lamenting mother. The murderers of Hugh did not fare as well as those of William had done; one of them w as hanged, and the others imprisoned in London.[5]
These incidents received even more fanciful treatment in the ballad literature of medieval England than they did in the hagiography.[6] For example, the ballad of "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter" tells how a schoolboy at play kicks a ball through an open window and then is enticed inside by the daughter of a Jew who dwells there. She tortures and kills the child with a
penknife,
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin,
And syne came out the bonnie heart's blood,--
There was nae mair within.
Then serves him up in something of the manner of a roast pig garnished with apples,
She laid him on a dressing-table,
She dressd him like a swine;
Says, Lie ye there, my bonnie Sir Hugh,
Wi' yere apples red and green'!
The body is thrown into a well, but its miraculous groans ultimately reveal the hiding place. The stories of these two boy "martyrs" have endured through t he centuries in England. In 1947 Benedictine monks of Ramsgate listed them in a calendar of saints, and even as late as 1959 a plaque commemorating the martyrdom of little St. Hugh and the guilt of his so-called
murderers still hung at Lincoln in the cathedral.[8]
The most polished presentation of this motif of a child murdered by Jews is in Chaucer's "Prioress's Tale," where it becomes an integral part of the characterization of a credulous, poorly educated woman. Chaucer's Prioress regales her fellow pilgrims with the tale of a little "clergeon" (a schoolboy) who, for love of Mary, learns an anthem in her praise and sings it every day on his way to and from school. Unfortunately, that way lies through the heart of the Jewish ghetto, and the constant dinning of a Christian hymn in the ears of those w ho dwell there so arouses Satan in their hearts that they hire an assassin to waylay the boy, to slit his throat and cast his body into a privy, thinking by this means to stop his song forever. But the love of Mary
for her clergeon is strong, and so by her power, even after death, he continues to sing, "Alma redemptoris mater," until his body is found, and a magic "grein" (pearl or seed) is removed from beneath his tongue. The murderers are executed and the boy goes to heaven to continue his song and follow forever "The white Lamb celestial..." (V254.7).[9]
Tales such as these were exceedingly popular in medieval England there were at least twenty-seven analogues of the "Prioress's Tale" and almost as many which dealt with Hugh of Lincoln and William of Norwich.[10]
But the accusation which they embody of a minority group's torturing and murdering a boy has cropped up in every century since the eleventh: five times in the twelfth century, fifteen in the thirteenth, ten in the fourteenth, sixteen in the fifteenth, thirteen in the sixteenth, eight in the seventeenth, fifteen in the eighteenth, and thirty-nine times in the nineteenth century. "In
our own era, as we might expect, such accusations w ere particularly prevalent in Germany during the 1930's. At that time Cecil Roth told of how "Nazi propagandists in Germany. . . issued periodical warnings to the general population to take special care of their children at Passover time in view of Jewish ritual requirements" and also cited the publication of the old, libelous
story in the official Nazi paper, Der Stuermer, edited by Julius Streicher in Nuremberg.[12] More recently a correspondent of the Los Angeles Times recalled attending meetings of the Hitler Youth when he was a boy visiting in Germany, meetings at which he heard tales of a German boy mutilated by Jews. [13]
Similar stories have been told in our own country, the last in a series of anonymous pamphlets issued in California in 1933.[14] But today the old motif has reappeared in the United States in a new and even more sinister form--if a more sinister form can be possible. On April 20, 1965, Paul Coates reported that," There was a rumor spreading all across Southern California that a little white boy had been assaulted and mutilated in a public restroom by a band of adult Negroes. The location of this 'atrocity' depended upon the person who was passing along the story.... The age of the child varied with the teller [and] . . . the color of the suspect varied according to the district. If there was a Negro neighborhood nearby. . . the suspects were Negroes. If there were Mexican-Americans living in the section, the suspects were Mexicans." Nor is the current version of a child tortured by members of a minority group confined to the west coast. Coates also told of a report in the Washington [D.C.] Star: "The headline read: 'Vicious And Unfounded-- Police Refute Rumors of Mutilation Crime.' It was exactly the same story. Only the locations had changed. Now it has 'happened' in Washington, Oxen Hill, Md. and Prince George County."[15] So the tale told by Socrates in Syria long ago is still with us, although the villains who maim or murder a boy are no longer Jews-- they have now become Mexicans or Negroes. The nameless folk of medieval England could make a song of such material and sing the ballad of "Little Sir Hugh." An artist such as Chaucer could turn it to religious ends and thus create a devout, exquisite cameo, which Nevill Coghill calls one of those tales "told and listened to as triumphs of Christianity."[16] But all too often the same motif has occasioned the persecution or even massacre of innocent people, and so to learn of its continued existence must fill many of us with distress similar to that expressed by Coates, who concludes his report, "I'm sorry that Washington and the Eastern Shore of Maryland [have] . . . to suffer what we went through last year. But I guess it is further evidence that nothing circulates so widely as . . . an ugly lie." [17]
University of California,
Los Angeles
Notes:
1 Montague Rhodes James, "The Legend," The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth, ed. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge, 1896), pp. lxii-lxiii; Cecil Roth, Preface, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew, The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli, ed. Cecil Roth (London, n.d.), p. 15.
2 Roth, pp. 15-16.
3 Jessopp and James, pp. v, li.
4 Jessopp and James, pp. 14-36; quotes, pp. 15, 23, 36, 29.
5 J. W . F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948),p p. 224-225; quote, p. 224.
6 Cf. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, New York, London, 1886--1898)3,. 233-254,5 .241.
7 Child, No. 155, E, 5. 246.
8 The Book of Saints... compiled by The Benedictine Monks of St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate ... with a calendar of Saints (4th ed., rev. and enlarged; New York, 1947), pp. 49, 298, 542, 607, 639, 666, 674; Time, LXXIV (Nov. 2, 1959), 77. For further information a bout the story o f St. Hugh, its reception and promulgation, see Hill, pp. 224-232.
9 Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Prioress's Tale," The Poetical Works of Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (2d ed; Boston, 1957), quote, 1581.
10 Robinson, p. 734. See also Carleton Brown, "The Prioress's Tale," Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York, 1958), pp. 447-485.
11 Raymund Webster, The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1912), 15.636.
12 Roth, p. 17.
13 Albert Sendry, quoted by Paul Coates, "An Ugly Lie, Once Nailed Here, Spreads Eastward to Maryland," Los Angeles Times, Apr. 20, 1965, p. 6, pt. 2.
14 Roth, p. 17.
15 Coates p. 6
16 The Poet Chaucer (London, 1948, reprinted 1955), p. 138.
17 Coates, p. 6.