contemporary, though the MS. is mostly of the next century. On the last
day of July, at a time when all the principal Jews of England were
collected at Lincoln, Hugh, a school-boy (_scholaris_) of nine, the only
son of a poor woman, was kidnapped towards sunset, while playing with
his comrades, by Jopin, a Jew of that place. He was concealed in Jopin’s
house six and twenty days, getting so little to eat and drink that he
had hardly the strength to speak. Then, at a council of all the Jews,
resident and other, it was determined that he should be put to death.
They stripped him, flogged him, spat in his face, cut off the cartilage
of the nose and the upper lip, and broke the main upper teeth; then
crucified him. The boy, fortified by divine grace, maintained himself
with cheerfulness, and uttered neither complaint nor groan. They ran
sharp points into him from the sole of his foot to the crown of his
head, till the body was covered with the blood from these wounds, then
pierced his side with a lance, and he gave up the ghost. The boy not
coming home as usual, his mother made search for him. As he was not
found, the information given by his playmates as to when and where they
had last seen him roused a strong suspicion among the Christians that he
had been carried off and killed by the Jews; all the more because there
were so many of them present in the town at that time, and from all
parts of the kingdom, though the Jews pretended that the occasion for
this unusual congregation was a grand wedding. The truth becoming every
day clearer, the mother set off for Scotland, where the king then
chanced to be, and laid the complaint at his feet. The Jews, meanwhile,
knowing that the business would be looked into, were in great
consternation; they took away the body in the night, and threw it into a
well. In the well it was found in the course of an inquisition ordered
by the king, and, when it was drawn out, a woman, blind for fifteen
years, who had been very fond of the boy, laid her hand on the body in
faith, exclaiming, Alas, sweet little Hugh, that it so happened! and
then rubbed her eyes with the moisture of the body, and at once
recovered her sight. The miracle drew crowds of people to the spot, and
every sick or infirm person that could get near the body went home well
and happy: hearing whereof, the dean and canons of the cathedral went
out in procession to the body of the holy martyr, and carried it to the
minster with all possible ceremony, where they buried it very honorably
(disregarding the passionate protests of a brother canon, of the parish
to which the boy belonged, who would fain have retained so precious, and
also valuable, an object within his own bounds). The king stopped at
Lincoln, on his way down from Scotland, looked into the matter, found
the charges against the Jews to be substantiated, and ordered an arrest
of the whole pack. They shut themselves up in their houses, but their
houses were stormed. In the course of the examination which followed,
John of Lessington promised Jopin, the head of the Jews, and their
priest (who was believed to be at the bottom of the whole transaction),
that he would do all he could to save his life, if Jopin would give up
the facts. Jopin, delighted at this assurance, and expecting to be able
to save the other Jews by the use of money, confessed everything. But
considering what a disgrace it would be to the king’s majesty if the
deviser and perpetrator of such a felony escaped scot-free, Jopin was,
by sentence of court, tied to the tail of a horse, dragged a long way
through the streets, over sticks and stones, and hanged. Such other Jews
as had been taken into custody were sent to London, and a good many
more, who were implicated but had escaped, were arrested in the
provinces. Eighteen suffered the same fate as Jopin. The Dominicans
exerted themselves to save the lives of the others,—bribed so to do, as
some thought; but they lost favor by it, and their efforts availed
nothing. It was ordered by the government that all the Jews in the land
who had consented to the murder, and especially those who had been
present, namely, seventy-one who were in prison in London, should die
the death of Jopin. But Richard of Cornwall, the king’s brother, to whom
the king had pledged all the Jews in England as security for a loan,
stimulated also by a huge bribe, withstood this violation of vested
rights, and further execution was stayed.[128]
An Anglo-French ballad of ninety-two stanzas, which also appears to be
contemporary with the event, agrees in many particulars with the account
given in the Annals of Burton, adding several which are found in none of
the foregoing narratives.[129] Hugh of Lincoln was kidnapped one evening
towards the beginning of August, by Peitevin, the Jew.[130] His mother
at once missed him, and searched for him, crying, I have lost my child!
till curfew. She slept little and prayed much, and immediately after her
prayer the suspicion arose in her mind that her child had been abducted
by the Jews. So, with the break of day, the woman went weeping through
the Jewry, calling at the Jews’ doors, Where is my child? Impelled by
the suspicion which, as it pleased God, she had of the Jews, she kept on
till she came to the court. When she came before King Henry (whom God
preserve!), she fell at his feet and begged his grace: “Sire, my son was
carried off by the Lincoln Jews one evening; see to it, for charity!”
The king swore by God’s pity, If it be so as thou hast told, the Jews
shall die; if thou hast lied on the Jews, by St Edward, doubt not thou
shalt have the same judgment. Soon after the child was carried off, the
Jews of Lincoln made a great gathering of all the richest of their sect
in England. The child was brought before them, tied with a cord, by the
Jew Jopin. They stripped him, as erst they did Jesus. Then said Jopin,
thinking he spoke to much profit, The child must be sold for thirty
pence, as Jesus was. Agim, the Jew, answered, Give me the child for
thirty pence; but I wish that he should be sentenced to death, since I
have bought him. The Jews said, Let Agim have him, but let him be put to
death forthwith: worse than this, they all cried with one voice, Let him
be put on the cross! The child was unbound and hanged on the cross,
vilely, as Jesus was. His arms were stretched to the cross, and his feet
and hands pierced with sharp nails, and he was crucified alive. Agim
took his knife and pierced the innocent’s side, and split his heart in
two. As the ghost left the body, the child called to his mother, Pray
Jesus Christ for me! The Jews buried the body, so that no one might know
of their privity, but some of them, passing the place the next morning,
found it lying above ground. When they heard of this marvel, they
determined in council that the corpse should be thrown into a jakes; but
the morning after it was again above ground. While they were in agonies
of terror, one of their number came and told them that a woman, who had
been his nurse, had agreed for money to take the body out of the city;
but he recommended that all the wounds should first be filled with
boiling wax. The body was taken off by this nurse and thrown into a well
behind the castle.[131] A woman coming for water the next day discovered
it lying on the ground, so filthy that she scarce durst touch it. This
woman bethought herself of the child which had been stolen. She went
back to Lincoln, and gave information to Hugh’s stepfather, who found
her tale probable by reason of the suspicion which he already had of the
Jews. The woman went through the city proclaiming that she had found the
child, and everybody flocked to the well. The coroners were sent for,
and came with good will to make their inspection. The body was taken
back to Lincoln. A woman came up, who had long before lost her sight,
and calling out, Alas, pretty Hugh, why are you lying here! applied her
hands to the corpse and then to her eyes, and regained her sight. All
who were present were witnesses of the miracle, and gave thanks to God.
A converted[132] Jew presented himself, and suggested that if they
wished to know how the child came by its death they should wash the body
in warm water; and this being done, the examination which he made
enabled him to show that this treason had been done by the Jews, for the
very wounds of Jesus were found upon the child. They of the cathedral,
hearing of the miracle, came out and carried the body to the church, and
buried it among other saints with great joy: mult ben firent, cum m’ est
avis. Soon after, the mother arrived from the court, very unhappy
because she had not been able to find her child. The Lincoln Jews were
apprehended and thrown into prison; they said, We have been betrayed by
Falsim. The next day King Henry came to Lincoln, and ordered the Jews
before him for an inquest. A wise man who was there took it upon him to
say that the Jew who would tell the truth to the king should fare the
better for it. Jopin, in whose house the treason had been done, told the
whole story as already related. King Henry, when all had been told,
cried, Right ill did he that killed him! The justices[133] went to
council, and condemned Jopin to death: his body was to be drawn through
the city “de chivals forts et ben ferré[s]” till life was extinct, and
then to be hanged. And this was done. I know well where, says the
singer: by Canewic, on the high hill.[134] Of the other Jews it is only
said that they had much shame.
The English ballads, the oldest of which were recovered about the middle
of the last century, must, in the course of five hundred years of
tradition, have departed considerably from the early form; in all of
them the boy comes to his death for breaking a Jew’s window, and at the
hands of the Jew’s daughter. The occurrence of Our Lady’s draw-well, in
#A#, is due to a mixing, to this extent, of the story of Hugh with that
of the young devotee of the Virgin who is celebrated in Chaucer’s
Prioresses Tale. In Chaucer’s legend, which somewhat strangely removes
the scene to a city in Asia, a little “clergeon” (cf. the scholaris of
the Annals of Burton) excites, not very unnaturally, the wrath of the
Jews by singing the hymn “Alma redemptoris mater” twice a day, as he
passes, schoolward and homeward, through the Jewry. For this they cut
his throat and throw him into a privy. The Virgin comes to him, and bids
him sing the anthem still, till a grain which she lays upon his tongue
shall be removed. The mother, in the course of her search for her boy,
goes to the pit, under divine direction, and hears him singing.
Another version of this legend occurs in a collection of the Miracles of
Our Lady in the Vernon MS., c. 1375, leaf cxxiii, back; printed by Dr.
Horstmann in Herrig’s Archiv, 1876, LVI, 224, and again in the Chaucer
Society’s Originals and Analogues, p. 281. The boy, in this, contributes
to the support of his family by singing and begging in the streets of
Paris. His song is again Alma redemptoris mater, and he sings it one
Saturday as he goes through the Jewry. He is killed, disposed of, and
discovered as in Chaucer’s tale, and the bishop, who “was come to see
that wonder,” finds in the child’s throat a lily, inscribed all over
with Alma redemptoris mater, which being taken out the song ceases. But
when the child’s body is carried to the minster, and a requiem mass is
begun, the corpse rises up, and sings Salve, sancta parens.
Another variety of the legend is furnished by the Spanish Franciscan
Espina, Fortalicium Fidei, 1459, in the edition of Lyons, 1500, fol.
ccviii, reprinted by the Chaucer Society, Originals and Analogues, p.
108.[135] The boy is here called Alfonsus of Lincoln. The Jews, having
got him into their possession, deliberate what shall be done to him, and
decide that the tongue with which he had sung Alma redemptoris shall be
torn out, likewise the heart in which he had meditated the song, and the
body be thrown into a jakes. The Virgin comes to him, and puts a
precious stone in his mouth, to supply the place of his tongue, and the
boy at once begins to sing the anthem, and keeps on incessantly for four
days; at the end of which time the discovery is made by the mother, as
before. The body is taken to the cathedral, where the bishop delivers a
sermon, concluding with an injunction upon all present to pour out their
supplications to heaven that this mystery may be cleared up. The boy
rises to his feet, takes the jewel from his mouth, explains everything
that has passed, hands the jewel to the bishop, to be preserved with
other reliques, and expires.
A miracle versified from an earlier source by Gautier de Coincy, some
thirty or forty years before the affair of Hugh of Lincoln, is obviously
of the same ultimate origin as the Prioresses Tale. A poor woman in
England had an only son with a beautiful voice, who did a good deal for
the support of his mother by his singing. The Virgin took a particular
interest in this clerçoncel, among whose songs was Gaude Maria, which he
used to give in a style that moved many to tears. One day, when he was
playing in the streets with his comrades, they came to the Jews’ street,
where some entertainment was going on which had collected a great many
people, who recognized the boy, and asked him to give them a song about
Our Lady. He sang with his usual pathos and applause. Jews were
listening with the rest, and one of them was so exasperated by a passage
in the hymn that he would have knocked the singer on the head then and
there, had he dared. When the crowd was dispersed, this Jew enticed the
child into his house by flattery and promises, struck him dead with an
axe, and buried him. His mother went in search of him, and learned the
second day that the boy had been singing in the Jewry the day before,
and it was intimated that the Jews might have laid hands on him and
killed him. The woman gave the Virgin to understand that if she lost her
child she should never more have confidence in her power; nevertheless,
more than twenty days passed before any light was thrown on his
disappearance. At the end of that time, being one day in the Jews’
street, and her wild exclamations having collected a couple of thousand
people, she gave vent to her conviction that the Jews had killed her
son. Then the Virgin made the child, dead and buried as he was, sing out
Gaude Maria in a loud and clear voice. An assault was made on the Jews
and the Jews’ houses, including that of the murderer; and here, after
much searching, guided by the singing, they found the boy buried under
the door, perfectly well, and his face as red as a fresh cherry. The boy
related how he had been decoyed into the house and struck with an axe;
the Virgin had come to him in what seemed a sleep, and told him that he
was remiss in not singing her response as he had been wont, upon which
he began to sing. Bells were rung, the Virgin was glorified, some Jews
were converted, the rest massacred. (G. de Coincy, ed. Poquet, col. 557
ff; Chaucer Society, Originals and Analogues, p. 253 ff.) The same
miracle, with considerable variations, occurs in Mariu Saga, ed. Unger,
p. 203, No 62, ‘Af klerk ok gyðingum;’ also in Collin de Plancy,
Légendes des Saintes Images, p. 218, ‘L’Enfant de Chœur de Notre-Dame du
Puy,’ under the date 1325.
Murders like that of Hugh of Lincoln have been imputed to the Jews for
at least seven hundred and fifty years,[136] and the charge, which there
is reason to suppose may still from time to time be renewed, has brought
upon the accused every calamity that the hand of man can inflict,
pillage, confiscation, banishment, torture, and death, and this in huge
proportions. The process of these murders has often been described as a
parody of the crucifixion of Jesus. The motive most commonly alleged, in
addition to the expression of contempt for Christianity, has been the
obtaining of blood for use in the Paschal rites,—a most unhappily
devised slander, in stark contradiction with Jewish precept and
practice. That no Christian child was ever killed by a Jew, that there
never even was so much truth as that (setting aside the object) in a
single case of these particular criminations, is what no Christian or
Jew would undertake to assert; but of these charges in the mass it may
safely be said, as it has been said, that they are as credible as the
miracles which, in a great number of cases, are asserted to have been
worked by the reliques of the young saints, and as well substantiated as
the absurd sacrilege of stabbing, baking, or boiling the Host,[137] or
the enormity of poisoning springs, with which the Jews have equally been
taxed.[138] And these pretended child-murders, with their horrible
consequences, are only a part of a persecution which, with all
moderation, may be rubricated as the most disgraceful chapter in the
history of the human race.[139]
Cases in England, besides that of Hugh of Lincoln, are William of
Norwich, 1137, the Saxon Chronicle, Earle, p. 263, Acta Sanctorum, March
(25), III, 588; a boy at Gloucester, 1160, Brompton, in Twysden, col.
1050, Knyghton, col. 2394; Robert of St Edmondsbury, 1181, Gervasius
Dorobornensis, Twysden, col. 1458; a boy at Norwich, stolen,
circumcised, and kept for crucifixion, 1235, Matthew Paris, Chronica
Majora, Luard, III, 305 (see also III, 543, 1239, IV, 30, 1240); a boy
at London, 1244, Matthew Paris, IV, 377 (doubtful, but solemnly buried
in St. Paul’s); a boy at Northampton, 1279, crucified, but not quite
killed, the continuator of Florence of Worcester, Thorpe, II, 222.
It would be tedious and useless to attempt to make a collection of the
great number of similar instances which have been mentioned by
chroniclers and ecclesiastical writers; enough come readily to hand
without much research.
A boy was crucified and thrown into the Loire by the Jews of Blois in
1171: Sigiberti Gemblacensis Chronica, auctarium Roberti de Monte, in
Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. Script., VI, 520, Grätz, Geschichte der Juden,
VI, 217–19. Philip Augustus had heard in his early years from playmates
that the Jews sacrificed a Christian annually (and, according to some,
partook of his heart), and this is represented as having been his reason
for expelling the Jews from France. Richard of Pontoise was one of these
victims, in 1179: Rigordus, Gesta Philippi Augusti, p. 14 f., § 6, and
Guillelmus Armoricus, p. 179, § 17, in the edition of 1882; Acta
Sanctorum, March (25), III, 591. France had such a martyr as late as
1670: see the case of Raphaël Lévy in Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum,
2^r Theil, 224; Drumont, La France Juive, II, 402–09.
Alfonso the Wise has recorded in the Siete Partidas, 1255, that he had
heard that the Jews were wont to crucify on Good Friday children that
they had stolen (or waxen images, when children were not to be had),
Partida VII, Tit. XXIV, Ley ii^a, III, 670, ed. 1807, and this was one
of the most effective grounds offered in justification of the expulsion
of the Jews under Ferdinand and Isabella: Amador de los Rios, Historia
de los Judíos de España, I, 483 f. San Dominguito de Val, a choir-boy of
seven, Chaucer’s clergeon over again, was said to have been stolen and
crucified at Saragossa in 1250: Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, 1726, vol.
ix, 2d part, pp. 484–86; Acta SS., Aug. (31), VI, 777. Several children
were crucified at Valladolid in 1452, and like outrages occurred near
Zamora in 1454, and at Sepulveda in 1468: Grätz, VIII, 238. Juan
Passamonte, “el niño de Guardia,” was kidnapped in 1489, and crucified
in 1490: Llorente (Pellier), Histoire de l’Inquisition, ed. 1818, I, 258
f.
Switzerland affords several stories of the sort: a boy at Frisingen in
1287, Ulrich, Sammlung jüdischer Geschichten, p. 149; Rudolf of Bern,
1288 or 1294, Ulrich, pp. 143–49, Acta Sanctorum, April (17), II, 504,
Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, p. 283; a boy at Zürich, 1349, another
at Diessenhofen, 1401, Ulrich, pp. 82, 248 f.
Examples are particularly numerous in Germany. 1181, Vienna, Zunz, p.
25; 1198, Nuremberg, Stobbe, p. 281; about 1200, Erfurt, Zunz, p. 26;
1220, St Henry, Weissenburg, Acta SS., April, II, 505 (but 1260,
Schœpflin, Alsatia Illustrata, II, 394 f.); 1235–6, Fulda, Grätz,
Geschichte der Juden, VII, 109, 460; 1261, Magdeburg, Stobbe, p. 282;
1283, Mayence, Grätz, VII, 199; 1285, Munich, Grätz, VII, 200, Aretin,
Geschichte der Juden in Baiern, p. 18; 1286, Oberwesel, near Bacharach,
Werner (boy or man), Grätz, VII, 201, 479, Stobbe, p. 282, Acta
Sanctorum, April (19), II, 697; 1292, Colmar, Stobbe, p. 283; 1293,
Krems, _ib._; 1302, Remken, _ib._; 1303, Conrad, at Weissensee, _ib._;
1345, Henry, at Munich, Acta SS., May (27), VI, 657; 1422, Augsburg, or
1429, Ravensburg, Ulrich, p. 88 ff; 1454, Breslau, Grätz, VIII, 205;
1462, Andrew, in Tyrol, Acta SS., July (12), III, 462; 1474 and 1476,
Ratisbon, Zeitschrift für die historische Theologie (Train, Geschichte
der Juden in Regensburg), 1837, Heft 3, p. 98 ff., 104 ff., and
(Saalschütz), 1841, Heft 4, p. 140 ff., Grätz, VIII, 279 ff.; 1475,
Simon of Trent, Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script., XX, 945–49 (Annals of
Placentia), Liliencron, Historische V. l. der Deutschen, II, 13, No 128,
Grätz, VIII, 269 ff., Acta SS., March (24), III, 494, La Civiltà
Cattolica, 1881 and 1882;[140] a little before 1478, Baden, Train, as
above, p. 117; 1540, Zappenfeld, near Neuburg (nothing “proved”),
Aretin, p. 44 f.; 1562, Andrew, Tyrol, Acta SS., July (12), III, 462,
with a picture,[141] p. 464; 1650, Caden (and others in Styria,
Carinthia, and Carniola), Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 1711, 2^r
Theil, p. 223; near Sigeberg, in the diocese of Cologne, Joanettus, Acta
SS., March, III, 502, with no year.
Italy appears to be somewhat behind the rest of Europe. The Fortalicium
Fidei reports a case at Pavia some time before 1456, and another at
Savona of about 1452: Basel ed. (c. 1475), fol. 116 f. 1480, Venice,
Beato Sebastiano da Porto Buffolè del Bergamasco, Civiltà Cattolica, X,
737. Israel, one of the culprits of Trent, revealed his knowledge of
similar transactions at Padova, Mestre, Serravalle and Bormio, in the
course of his own life, besides several in Germany: Civ. Catt., X, 737.
Further, 1305, Prague, Eisenmenger, p. 221; 1407, Cracow, “Dlugosz,
Hist. Polonicæ, l. x, p. 187;” 1494, Tyrnau, Ungerische Chronica, 1581,
p. 375; 1505, Budweis, Stobbe, p. 292; 1509, Bösing, Hungary,
Eisenmenger, p. 222; 1569, Constantinople, Fickler, Theologia Juridica,
1575, p. 505 (cited by Michel); 1598, Albertus, in Polonia, Acta SS.,
April (circa 20), II, 835.
Train, as above, p. 98, note, adds, with authorities, Pforzheim,
Ueberlingen, Swäbisch-Hall, Friuli, Halle, Eichstädt, Berlin. See also
Acta SS., April, III, 838 (De pluribus innocentibus per Judæos
excruciatis), March, III, 589, and April, II, 505; and Drumont, La
France Juive, II, 392 f.
The charge against the Jews of murdering children for their blood is by
no means as yet a thing of the past. The accusation has been not
infrequently made in Russia during the present century. Although the
entertaining of such an inculpation was forbidden by an imperial ukase
in 1817, a criminal process on this ground, involving forty-three
persons, was instituted in 1823, and was brought to a close only in
1835, when the defendants were acquitted on account of the entire
failure of proof: Stobbe, p. 186. The murder of a child of six in
Neuhoven, in the district of Düsseldorf, in 1834, occasioned the
demolition of two Jewish houses and a synagogue: Illgen, in Zeitschrift
für die historische Theologie, 1837, Heft 3, 40, note. In February,
1840, a Greek boy of ten disappeared in Rhodes. The Jews were believed
to have killed him for his blood. Torture was freely used to extort
confessions. The case was removed to Constantinople, and in July, upon
the report of the supreme court, the Divan pronounced the innocence of
the defendants: Illgen, Z. f. d. Hist. Theol., 1841, Heft 4, p. 172,
note, Hume, Sir Hugh of Lincoln, p. 30.[142] In 1881, the Jews were in
suspicion on account of a boy at Alexandria, and of a girl at Calarasi,
Wallachia: Civiltà Cattolica, VIII, 225, 737. The Moniteur de Rome, June
15, 1883, affords several more of these too familiar tales. A Greek
child was stolen at Smyrna, a few years before the date last mentioned,
towards the time of the Passover, and its body found four days after,
punctured with pins in a thousand places. The mother, like Beatrice in
1255, denounced the Jews as the culprits; the Christian population rose
in a mass, rushed to the Jews’ quarter, and massacred more than six
hundred. An affair of the same nature took place at Balata, the Ghetto
of Constantinople, in 1842, of which the consequences to the Jews are
not mentioned; and again at Galata, “where the Jews escaped by bribing
the Turkish police to suppress testimony” (Drumont, II, 412). A young
girl disappeared at Tisza-Eszlár, in Hungary, in April, 1882, and the
Jews were suspected of having made away with her. The preliminary
judicial inquiry was marked by the intimidation and torture of several
persons examined for evidence. Fifteen who were held for trial were
absolutely acquitted in August, 1883, after more than a year of
imprisonment. The shops of Jews in Budapest were plundered by Christians
disappointed in the verdict! (Der Blut-Prozess von Tisza-Eszlár, New
York, 1883.)
#B# is translated by Herder, I, 120; by Bodmer, I, 59; in Seckendorf’s
Musenalmanach für das Jahr 1808, p. 5; by Doering, p. 163; by Von
Marées, p. 48. Allingham’s ballad by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen
Alt-Englands, p. 118.
A
Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, I, 151, as taken down by the editor from
Mrs Brown’s recitation.
1
Four and twenty bonny boys
Were playing at the ba,
And by it came him sweet Sir Hugh,
And he playd oer them a’.
2
He kickd the ba with his right foot,
And catchd it wi his knee,
And throuch-and-thro the Jew’s window
He gard the bonny ba flee.
3
He’s doen him to the Jew’s castell,
And walkd it round about;
And there he saw the Jew’s daughter,
At the window looking out.
4
‘Throw down the ba, ye Jew’s daughter,
Throw down the ba to me!’
‘Never a bit,’ says the Jew’s daughter,
‘Till up to me come ye.’
5
‘How will I come up? How can I come up?
How can I come to thee?
For as ye did to my auld father,
The same ye’ll do to me.’
6
She’s gane till her father’s garden,
And pu’d an apple red and green;
’Twas a’to wyle him sweet Sir Hugh,
And to entice him in.
7
She’s led him in through ae dark door,
And sae has she thro nine;
She’s laid him on a dressing-table,
And stickit him like a swine.
8
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin,
And syne came out the bonny heart’s blood;
There was nae mair within.
9
She’s rowd him in a cake o lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep;
She’s thrown him in Our Lady’s draw-well,
Was fifty fathom deep.
10
When bells were rung, and mass was sung,
And a’the bairns came hame,
When every lady gat hame her son,
The Lady Maisry gat nane.
11
She’s taen her mantle her about,
Her coffer by the hand,
And she’s gane out to seek her son,
And wanderd oer the land.
12
She’s doen her to the Jew’s castell,
Where a’were fast asleep:
‘Gin ye be there, my sweet Sir Hugh,
I pray you to me speak.’