The Jew's Garden- Hubbard (MS) c.1876 Hudson
[From: Ballads and Songs from Mississippi by Arthur Palmer Hudson; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 39, No. 152 (Apr. - Jun., 1926), pp. 93-194. Also in Folksongs of Mississippi. Hudson's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2013, 2015]
8. SIR HUGH, OR, THE JEW'S DAUGHTER (Child, No. 255.)
"The Jew's Garden." Communicated by Mrs. Mims Williams, Magee, Mississippi, with the following note:
"Obtained from Mrs. Belle Holt Hubbard, Terry, Mississippi, aged 79; sung to her in her infancy at her home in Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi. "I am not satisfied with this 'Jew's Garden,' but am sending it as her daughter took it down. It isn't exactly like she told me. The first verse seems different, and I know some lines or words were repeated. It is remarkable that Mrs. Hubbard has remembered the ballads at all. Her early life was spent in surroundings quite different from the ones supposed to foster the making and preservation of such songs. The Holts are of English ancestry and came to Mississippi in territorial days via one of the older Southern states. They are people of culture and had considerable wealth before the Civil War. When Mrs. Hubbard says she learned 'The Jew's Garden' in infancy, she means it was used by her mother to sing her to sleep. This is probably the reason the bloody part was omitted. Still, it's rather a gruesome lullaby yet. Has a 'the goblins will get you if you don't look out' sound."
See Cox, No. 19, the fifth stanzas of whose D and E texts resemble closely the fourth stanza of the following text; Pound, No. 5 (A), which agrees with the following text in the rain motif; Campbell and Sharp, No. 26, the second and third stanzas of which contain mention of the well and the Bible and prayer book, as in the last stanza of the following.
1. It rains, it rains on London lanes,
Both great drops and small;
And don't you see that little school boy
A-playing with his ball?
2. He played it high, he played it low,
He played it everywhere;
He played it in the Jew's garden.
The Jews were sitting there.
3. "Come hither, come hither, you little school boy,
And bring that ball to me!"
"I won't, I shan't; I won't and I can't!"
He answered merrily.
4. "I'll give you an apple as round as a ball,
I'll give you a gay gold ring,
I'll give you a cherry as red as blood."
At length she coaxed him in.
5. "Oh, Sister, dear Sister, when you go home,
And Father asks for me,
Oh, tell him, just tell him his dear little boy
He never more shall see."
6. They put a Bible at his head,
A prayer book at his feet,
And pitched him in a deep, dark well,
Full forty fathoms deep.