+The Text+ is given from Jamieson's _Popular Ballads_, as taken down by
him from Mrs. Brown's recitation.
+The Story+ of the ballad is told at length in at least two ancient
monastic records; in the _Annals of the Monastery of Waverley_, the
first Cistercian house in England, near Farnham, Surrey (edited by
Luard, vol. ii. p. 346, etc., from MS. Cotton Vesp, A. xvi. fol. 150,
etc.); more fully in the _Annals of the Monastery at Burton-on-Trent_,
Staffordshire (edited by Luard, vol. i. pp. 340, etc., from MS. Cotton
Vesp. E. iii. fol. 53, etc.). Both of these give the date as 1255, the
latter adding July 31. Matthew Paris also tells the tale as a
contemporary event. The details may be condensed as follows.
All the principal Jews in England being collected at the end of July
1255 at Lincoln, Hugh, a schoolboy, while playing with his companions
(_jocis ac choreis_) was by them kidnapped, tortured, and finally
crucified. His body was then thrown into a stream, but the water,
_tantam sui Creatoris injuriam non ferens_, threw the corpse back on to
the land. The Jews then buried it; but it was found next morning
above-ground. Finally it was thrown into a well, which at once was lit
up with so brilliant a light and so sweet an odour, that word went forth
of a miracle. Christians came to see, discovered the body floating on
the surface, and drew it up. Finding the hands and feet to be pierced,
the head ringed with bleeding scratches, and the body otherwise wounded,
it was at once clear to all _tanti sceleris auctores detestandos fuisse
Judaeos_, eighteen of whom were subsequently hanged.
Other details may be gleaned from various accounts. The name of the Jew
into whose house the boy was taken is given as Copin or Jopin. Hugh was
eight or nine years old. Matthew Paris adds the circumstance of Hugh's
mother (Beatrice by name) seeking and finding him.
The original story has obviously become contaminated with others (such
as Chaucer's _Prioresses Tale_) in the course of six hundred and fifty
years. But the central theme, the murder of a child by the Jews, is
itself of great antiquity; and similar charges are on record in Europe
even in the nineteenth century. Further material for the study of this
ballad may be found in Francisque Michel's _Hugh de Lincoln_ (1839), and
J. O. Halliwell [-Phillipps]'s _Ballads and Poems respecting Hugh of
Lincoln_ (1849).
Percy in the _Reliques_ (1765), vol. i. p. 32, says:-- 'If we consider,
on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such
stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who record
them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by the
barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand, the
great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate motives
they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror, we may
reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and malicious.'
The tune 'as sung by the late Mrs. Sheridan' may be found in John
Stafford Smith's _Musica Antiqua_ (1812), vol. i. p. 65, and
Motherwell's _Minstrelsy_, tune No. 7.