The Jew's Daughter- McNab (NS) 1929 Creighton
[From: Creighton, Songs & Ballads from Nova Scotia (1932) pp.16-17. Her notes Follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes: No. 8. Sir Hugh ; or the Jew's Daughter. Child 155.
This ballad is interesting not for its antiquity alone, but for the story that lies behind it. In most of the European countries as well as in Great Britain, it has been thought for nearly a thousand years that Jews crucified children for ritualistic purposes in contempt of Christ, enticing them into their homes for that purpose.
The deep draw well of stanza 7 is in Child (A) Our Lady's Well. Here the boy's mother finds her son, Sir Hugh, who asks her to prepare his winding-sheet and appoints to meet her at the back of the town. Bells are rung without man's hands,
"And a' the books of merry Lincoln
Were read without man's tongue."
Bishop Percy says the ballad was probably built upon some Italian legend, and notes the great resemblance to Chaucer's Prioresses Tale. Both he and Child discredit absolutely the legend that Jews ever crucified Christian children, but consider these tales to excuse cruelties to these wretched people. Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, p. 195, associates
the legend with black magic.
The ballad seems to be quite universal. It is a pity Mrs. McNab could not recall the rest of the words, for as far as it goes this is a particularly interesting and valuable variant. Newell, No. 18, has found it sung by children on the streets of New York, and Scarborough, On the Trail of the Negro Folk-songs, pp. 52-53, among the American negroes.
The Jew's Daughter- Sung by Mrs. William McNab, Halifax.
1. Ir rains, it rains in merry Scotland,
It rains in bower and ha',
And all the boys in merry Scotland
Are playing of the ba'.
2. They tossed it high, so very high,
They tossed it high and low,
They tossed it into a Jew's garden
Where many a flower did grow.
3. Then out came one of the Jew's daughters,
She was all dressed in green,
" Come in, come in, my little boy,
And get your ball again."
4. "I won't come in; I daren't come in;
I won't come in at all.
I can't come in; I won't come in
Without my schoolfellows all."
5 She gave him an apple green as the grass,
She gave him a gay, gold ring,
She gave him a cherry as red as the blood
Until she enticed him in.
6 She sat him on a golden chair
And gave him sugar sweet,
She laid him on a dresser board
And stabbed him like a sheep.
7 She threw him in a deep, cold well
Where it was deep and cold.
. . . .
. . . .