her parents had gone away, and before going they told her if she lost
her ball the _magician_ who gave it her would hang her. After they had
gone she began playing with the ball, and, as it happened, it went
into a brook at the back of the _magician’s_ house. She cried till she
thought she would tell her father she had lost her golden ball. When
she met him she began saying:—
Father, father, have you brought my golden ball
Or have you come to _set me free_,
Or have you come to see me hung
Upon that gallant tree?”
[The same question is repeated to the mother, brother, and sister,
and cousins, and last of all to the sweetheart, who says that he has
not come to see her hung, and stoops down and kisses her. They were
married and happy ever after.][102]
[102] Told to me by Sarah Ellen Potter, aged 14, the daughter of Mr.
George Potter, of Castleton.
No fewer than eighteen other versions of the ballad here printed have
been published.[103] With one exception, these other versions omit the
lines about the hangman and the child’s escape from the gallows. But in
other respects they substantially agree in the story which they tell. A
number of children are playing at ball, when one of them accidentally
throws it into a Jew’s garden. The Jew’s daughter entices the boy to
come in and fetch the ball. He is then laid on a dressing-board, and
stabbed to the heart with a penknife, “like a swine,” or, as four of
the versions have it, “like a sheep.” His body is then encased in lead,
or in “a quire of tin,” and thrown into a draw-well. His mother goes
forth to seek him, when he answers from the well, and bids her make
his winding-sheet. The scene is variously laid in “merry Scotland,” in
the city of Lincoln, in “Mirryland town,” in “Maitland town,” and in
“Merrycock land.”[104] In version F of Prof. Child’s collection the
time is “a summer’s morning,” and in version N we are told that the
deed was done “on a May, on a Midsummer’s day.”
[103] In Prof. Child’s _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, part v.,
p. 233 _seq._
[104] As regards “Mirryland town,” it appears that the soil of the
Morayland, in North-East Scotland, is gravelly, and much improved by
summer rains. Hence the distich:—
A misty May and a dropping June
Brings the bonny land of Moray aboon.
—Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, new ed., p. 269.
In a story called “The Three Golden Balls,” reported from Romsey, in
Hampshire,[105] three girls called Pepper, Salt, and Mustard have each
of them a golden ball. They play with the balls, and Pepper loses hers.
Her mother is angry, and Pepper is hung on the gallows-tree. Next day
her father goes to her, and she says:—
[105] _Folk-lore_, vol. vi., p. 306.
“Oh, father have you found my ball,
Or have you _paid my fee_,
Or have you come to take me down
From this old gallows tree?”
This Hampshire version is much degraded, but it mentions _three
girls_, and is also important as showing that the one who was chosen
for sacrifice might be ransomed, as in the Derbyshire version, and so
escape death, if her father or her sisters would pay the proper fee.
They refuse, however, and the girl is redeemed by her sweetheart. In
this respect the Hampshire story resembles the Derbyshire metrical
version, in which the child is at last “bought free.” I shall refer to
the subject of redemption further on.
The concluding part of the Derbyshire version appears at first sight
to be inconsistent with the first part, inasmuch as the child’s
death seems to have been caused both by stabbing with a knife and by
suspension on a gallows. The version, however, is quite consistent with
itself, for the child was first stabbed and then suspended with the
head downwards.
At the present day an English butcher who is about to kill a sheep
lays it on a trestle. He then sticks a knife into the jugular vein,
and leaves the sheep for a short time on the trestle until it is quite
dead. Afterwards he skins and dresses it, and then he passes a piece
of wood through the sinews of the hind legs. From this piece of wood
it is hung, by means of a hook, head downwards from a transverse bar.
In former times a transverse wooden bar appears to have been used
instead of an iron bar, and to have been called the “gallows-tree”
(the gallows being the two upright posts), just as the transverse bar
from which the cauldron was hung in the kitchens of old houses was
called the “galley-balk.” On turning to the word “gallows” in the _New
English Dictionary_, I find three quotations from modern books, in
which slaughtered sheep or cattle are described as being hung on the
gallows. The first is from Lady Barker’s _Station Life in New Zealand_,
1866 (x. 64), in which the gallows is described as “a high wooden frame
from which the carcasses of the butchered sheep dangle.” The third
is from Boldrewood’s _Colonial Reformer_, 1891, p. 350, where the
“gallows” of the colonists is described as “a rough, rude contrivance
consisting of two uprights and a cross-piece for elevating slaughtered
cattle.” One can hardly doubt that these colonists were adopting a
practice once followed in the mother country, and, accordingly, the
apparent inconsistency between the concluding part of the Derbyshire
version and the first part of that version disappears. The child was
first stabbed “like a sheep,” and then hung, as a sheep was, on a
gallows-tree or transverse piece of wood. This suspension was identical
with crucifixion on a Tau-cross, or _crux commissa_.
Amongst the versions of the ballad given by Prof. Child is a fragment,
numbered L, which was supplied to him by the late Canon Venables,
Precentor of Lincoln, and which came from Buckinghamshire. It was told
to Canon Venables about the year 1825. On this, Prof. Child remarks,
in a note, that “the singer tagged on to this fragment version C of
the Maid freed from the Gallows given at II., 352.” The portion of
the story which Prof. Child calls “the Maid freed from the Gallows”
can hardly have been “tagged on.” It is found in Derbyshire and
Buckinghamshire, and the metre of both portions is the same. And the
lost ball occurs in both.
It remains to show for what reason the child was sacrificed. Ten of
the versions published by Prof. Child begin by mentioning the falling
rain—a thing which at first sight appears to have nothing to do with
the matter. Thus in the Shropshire version we have:—
“It rains, it rains, in Merry-Cock land,
It hails, it rains both great and small.”[106]
[106] Child, _ut supra_, referring to Miss Burne’s _Shropshire
Folk-lore_, p. 539.
And in the copy taken by Prof. Child from Brydges’s _Restituta_, we
have:—
“It rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains both great and small.”
The Derbyshire version, as we have seen, begins by saying that the rain
is falling “both thick and small.”
Now it is remarkable that seven of the versions given by Prof. Child
refer to the victim’s blood, as it flowed from the wound, as being both
thick and thin. Thus in the version taken from Percy’s _Reliques_, we
have:—
“And out and cam the thick, thick bluid,
And out and cam the thin.”
Obviously the falling rain, which seems at first sight to enter so
needlessly into numerous versions of the story, would have a great
deal to do with the matter if the shedding of the child’s blood
were intended to be an act of imitative magic simulating, and hence
producing, rain. In Central Australia men are bled with a sharp flint,
and “the blood is thought to represent rain.” And “in Java, when rain
is wanted, two men will sometimes thrash each other with supple rods
till the blood flows down their backs; the streaming blood represents
the rain, and no doubt is supposed to make it fall on the ground.”[107]
[107] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, i., pp. 86, 88, and the authorities
there cited.
We know from other traditions that children were sacrificed, if not
in Great Britain, at least elsewhere, with the intention of once more
filling the dry beds of rivers. The Rev. Joseph Hunter (1783–1861) has
recorded these lines about the English river Dun, or Don:—
“The shelving, slimy, river Dun,
Each year a daughter or a son.”[108]
[108] Hunter’s MSS. in the British Museum.
The Rev. W. Gregor has told us that the Scottish river Spey “is spoken
of as ‘she,’ and bears the character of being ‘bloodthirsty.’ The
common belief is that ‘she’ must have at least one victim yearly.
“The rhyme about the [Scottish] rivers Dee and Don and their victims
is:—
“‘Bloodthirsty Dee,
Each year needs three;
But bonny Don,
She needs none.’”[109]
[109] _Folk-lore_, iii., 72.
There were German rivers which required their victim on Midsummer
Day,[110] and this, as we have seen, is the very day mentioned in
one of the versions of our ballad. In nine of the versions given by
Prof. Child, the body of the little victim is thrown into a draw-well,
after having been rolled, as some of the versions say, in a “case,” or
“cake,” of lead. The throwing of the body into a well was doubtless
intended as a further rain-charm, just as, to give a single example,
the man who gave the last stroke at threshing in the Tyrol was flung
into the river.[111] It appears from the _Annals of Waverley_,[112]
that the body of Hugh of Lincoln was first thrown into a running
stream, and ejected by the stream. It was afterwards thrown into a
drinking well.
[110] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, 2nd edit., i., pp. 86, 88.
[111] Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, iii., 318. See also Hartland, _Legend of
Perseus_, iii., 73 _seq._ Mr. Hartland shows how widely spread was the
custom of offering sacrifice to water. As late as the beginning of the
nineteenth century firstborn children, according to Mr. Crooke, were
offered to the Ganges.
[112] Child, _ut supra_, citing _Annales Monastici_, ed. Luard, ii.,
346 _seq._
A few words must be said about the Jew, or Jew’s daughter, mentioned in
the different versions of the ballad and in the chronicles. We ought
not to overlook the fact that the Jews at an early period of their
history sacrificed, and at a later period redeemed, their first-born
children, as many passages in Exodus and Numbers plainly indicate.
But to say, as Matthew Paris does, that the Jews of Lincoln stole a
boy named Hugh, and scourged, crowned, and crucified him, as a parody
of the crucifixion of Jesus, is to make a very large demand on our
credulity. The Jews of Lincoln were not at all likely to have risked
their lives and property by such an act of wanton and hideous cruelty.
Nor is the evidence afforded by the different versions of the ballad
sufficient to establish the fact that the Jews sacrificed children in
Great Britain for any purpose or in any way. These different versions
seem to have all sprung from the same original, and the thing to be
tested is the credibility of that original. Its value as evidence
against the Jews in Britain is impaired by the different places in
which the deed is alleged to have been done, and, moreover, we have
seen that the prose version from Castleton speaks of a “magician,” not
a Jew. Still more is the evidence vitiated by the existence of that
well-known popular hatred of the Jews, which gave rise to all sorts of
libels and slanders. A good example of this hatred appeared in London
as late as 1758, when a man—
“published a sensational account of a cruel murder committed by
certain Jews said to have lately arrived from Portugal, and then
living near Broad Street. They were said to have burnt a woman and a
new-born babe, because its father was a Christian. Certain Jews who
had arrived from Portugal, and who then lived in Broad Street, were
attacked by the mob, barbarously treated, and their lives endangered.
A criminal information was granted, although it was objected that
it did not appear precisely who were the persons accused of the
murder.”[113]
[113] Odgers on _Libel_, 1896, p. 445.
What the evidence does suggest is the former existence of a custom of
sacrificing children to make rain. It is not even alleged that the Jews
sacrificed children to the Spey, the Dee, or the Don.
There is, however, a document of much greater evidential value than
ballads and chronicles, which declares that a boy was crucified by Jews
at Lincoln. In the _Hundred Rolls_ for 3 Edward I. (1274), a sworn jury
found that “certain land in the parish of St. Martin [in Lincoln],
which belonged to Leo the Jew, who was condemned for the death of a
crucified boy, and which land was then in the tenure of William Badde,
was forfeited to the King as from the year 1256.”[114]
[114] “Item dicunt quod quædam terra quæ fuit Leonis judei dampnati pro
morte pueri crucefixi quam Willelmus Badde tenet in parochia Sancti
Martini est eschaeta domini Regis ab anno regni R.R.R. xljo, et valet
xx_s_ per annum.—_Rotuli Hundredorum_, i., 322. There is a similar
entry a few lines below.
That Leo the Jew was condemned for the crucifixion of a boy will hardly
be doubted. That the sentence was just and founded on sufficient
evidence is quite another matter. There may have been as little
evidence against the Jews of Lincoln in 1256 as there was against the
Portuguese Jews in London in 1758.
Although the evidence against the Jews with reference to the subject
which we are considering cannot be admitted as valid, we must not
conceal the fact that this people at an early period of their history
sacrificed their firstborn children. The story of Abraham’s intended
sacrifice of his son Isaac should lead us to suspect the early
existence of this custom. Dr. Frazer says that “the god of the Hebrews
plainly regarded the firstborn of men and the firstlings of animals as
his own,” the firstborn of men being generally redeemed.[115] And he
asks the question: “If the firstborn of men and cattle were ransomed by
a money payment, has not this last provision the appearance of being a
later mitigation of an older and harsher custom which doomed firstborn
children to the altar or the fire?” He then discusses the Passover,
and suggests that “the slaughter of firstborn children was formerly
what the slaughter of firstborn cattle always continued to be, not an
isolated butchery, but a regular custom, which, with the growth of more
humane sentiments, was afterwards softened into the vicarious sacrifice
of a lamb and the payment of a ransom for each child.”
[115] See _Golden Bough_, ii., 45 _seq._, and especially the citations
from Numbers and Exodus on p. 46.
The evidence which we have been examining does not mention the
firstborn. But it tells us that the child devoted to sacrifice could be
redeemed on payment of a “fee.” It is probable that those versions of
our ballad which end by the throwing of the body into a well, represent
the actual custom of early times when no redemption was possible. The
father and mother may have regarded it as a duty that their child
should become a victim, on the ground that it was better that he should
die than that a whole tribe should perish of drought and famine.
No tale has been more popular among English children than that which is
usually called “The Golden Ball.” In some form or other every collector
has heard it.[116] However much this tale may have been worn down in
the course of ages, it is still repeated with emphasis. If ever there
was a time when the blood of little children was shed, or when their
dripping bodies hung from a gallows-tree, to make the rain fall, how
could the memory of such a horror, and of deliverance from such a
death, fail to be preserved in ballad or in story?
[116] A Yorkshire version, much debased, is given in the first edition
of Henderson’s _Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of
England_, p. 333. It was collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould.
The Glass House[117]
[117] Told to me by Sarah Ellen Potter, aged 14, the daughter of Mr.
George Potter, of Castleton, Derbyshire, in 1901. Compare Grimm’s
_Kinder-und Haus Märchen_, No. 47, and Addy’s _Household Tales_, No. 10.
There was a little girl selling oranges, and she went to a lady’s
house, which was made of glass. It had glass doors, and everything was
glass. The girl asked her if she would purchase of her oranges, and
the lady said she would have them all if her mother would let her come
and be her little servant. So her mother let her go. One day she was
cleaning the glass window, when it broke. Then she broke the floor, and
when her mistress went to change her dress the little girl ran outside
to the gooseberry tree, and she said:—
“Gooseberry tree, gooseberry tree, hide me
For fear my mistress should find me,
For if she does she’ll break my bones,
And bury me under the marble stones.”
And the gooseberry tree said, “Go to the butcher’s.” And when she got
to the butcher’s, she said:—
“Butcher, butcher, hide me,” etc.
But the butcher said, “Go to the baker.” And when she got there, she
said:—
“Baker, baker, hide me,” etc.
And the baker said, “Get into this bread box.” And she got in, and he
nailed it up. While she was at the baker’s, her mistress had been to
the gooseberry tree, and it told her it had sent the little girl to
the butcher. When her mistress got to the butcher’s, he said he had
sent her to the baker’s. So she went to the baker’s, and he told her
to go away; but she said she would let his house be searched, and she
commenced. But when she came to the box that was nailed she shivered,
and she made him undo the nails, and out came the girl. So her mistress
took her with her, and as they were crossing a river the girl’s
mistress was leaning over a bridge, when the girl gave her a push, and
she fell over and was drowned. And the little girl went singing merrily
till she got to the glass house, and kept it as her own.
Peggy with the Wooden Leggy[118]
[118] Told to me by Florence Cooper, of the Peak Hotel, Castleton,
Derbyshire, in 1901. A much inferior version called “The Golden
Arm” was collected by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould in Devonshire. It is
printed in the first edition of Henderson’s _Folk-lore of the Northern
Counties_.
Once upon a time there lived together a very rich gentleman and his
wife, and they had a young and beautiful child—one of the fairest earth
had seen. She had bright golden hair. Her eyes were blue, and her
teeth like pearls from the ocean. Her parents loved her very dearly,
and if in their power would grant her every wish that she asked. But
Peggy fell down and broke her leg, and her father bought her a wooden
one. And with Peggy having a wooden leg, the children called her Peggy
Wooden Leg, and her father didn’t like that name. And at last, thinking
that something was wrong with her, he bought her a cork one, and then
they called her Peggy Cork Leg. And going into a shop one day, she
asked the shopman if he could change her leg for a golden one. At last
she was taken ill, and died, and the butler of her father’s house,
thinking it was a sin to let her be buried in her golden leg, stole it,
and hid it in his box. He was asleep one night, and he thought he heard
a knock, knock, knocking at the door. He said, “Now, bother me, what’s
that? No ghosts here.” On turning the bedclothes down he lay aghast,
for there at the foot of the bed stood the ghost of beautiful Peggy,
not as he had seen her the day before, beautiful as marble, but with
features without flesh, sockets without eyes, head without hair, and
mouth without teeth. He was terrified, but he thought he would speak to
her, and he says, “Peggy, is that you?” And she replied, “Yes; ’tis I.”
Then he says, “Peggy, where are those beautiful blue eyes of yours?”
She said, “They are worm-eaten and gone.”
And he said, “Where are those beautiful pearl teeth of yours?”
She said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”
And he said, “Where are those beautiful golden locks?”
And she said, “Worm-eaten and gone.”
Then he said, “Where is that beautiful golden leg of yours?”
And she said, “You—have—got it!!!” and vanished through the floor.[119]
[119] _Cf._ Pythagoras and his golden leg, referred to by Frazer,
_Golden Bough_, ii., 418; also the story about Isis, who, when she
collected the scattered limbs of Osiris, replaced the missing member
with one of wood.—Plutarch, _Isis et Osiris_, 18.
MISCELLANEOUS FOLK-LORE
A Skull as the Protector of a House
At Tunstead, between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Whaley Bridge, a skull in
three pieces has long been kept inside the window of a house. It is
known as Dicky Tunstead. If the skull is taken away, things will go
wrong in the house and on the land. When the house was being rebuilt
and new windows put in, they set Dicky on a couple beam in the barn,
and thought they had done with him, and would hear no more of him; but
at the rearing supper he made such a disturbance that they had to bring
him back into the house. Dicky appears in all kinds of shapes—sometimes
as a dog, and sometimes as a young lady in a silk dress. In whatever
form he appears, he will point to something amiss if you will follow
him. One of the “quarrels” of glass in the window where Dicky is is
always out, and if it is put in it is always found taken out again next
morning.[120]
[120] See _Laxdæla Saga_, 17 and 24. For another version of this story
see Mr. Le Blanc Smith’s article in the _Reliquary_ (new series), vol
xi., p. 228.
* * * * *
I was told that at Dunscar, a farmhouse in the parish of Castleton,
there is a human skull on the outside of a window sill. If it is
removed, the crops fare badly. I went to the farmhouse myself, and
found no skull there, and the tenant who had lived there many years had
never heard of such a thing.
Christmas Eve
In Bradwell Christmas Eve is known as Mischief Night. On that evening
gates are pulled off and hung in trees, and farmers’ carts are taken
away. They sometimes find them in the morning in a brook at the bottom
of the hill. On a certain Mischief Night a farmer was pushing a cart
down a steep hill into the brook with great eagerness, not knowing that
it was his own cart. He said to his companions, “layt it choiz,”[121]
_i.e._, let it down gently.
[121] I do not understand this word.
New Year
If you see the first new moon in the New Year through a glass there
will be a death in the family.
At Great Hucklow they say that if you put clothes out on New Year’s Day
there will be a death in the family before the end of the year.
Easter Observances
At Castleton and Bradwell, and in other villages of the High Peak,
Easter Monday is known as Unlousing Day, _i.e._, releasing day. When a
young woman came out of a house on the morning of that day the young
men used to say “kiss or cuck.” If the girls refused the kiss the young
men came in the evening and “cucked” them, _i.e._, tossed them up.
The young women at Castleton used to “cuck” the young men on Easter
Tuesday, and a tale is told there about a young man who was “cucked”
so often on Easter Tuesday that he fell on his knees and implored an
old woman who was driving a cow home not to “cuck” him. If the girl
accepted the proffered kiss she was released, _i.e._, she escaped being
tossed.
At Castleton the boys also kissed the girls on Valentine’s Day, and the
schoolmaster had to let the girls go home before the boys to prevent
the boys from kissing them.
“Cucking” was a very rough practice, and it sometimes led to charges
of assault being made before the magistrates. At Castleton it was
sometimes done by putting a “fork stale” or fork handle under the
girl’s legs and lifting her up. It required two young men to do this.
More frequently two men seized a girl by the arms and shoulders, tossed
her up, and caught her as she fell. It is said at Bradwell that more
girls were seen out on Unlousing Day than on any other day. The day is
sometimes known as Cucking Day.