This ballad preserves one of the darkest chapters in medieval English folklore: the legend of "Little Hugh of Lincoln," a boy whose death in 1255 was blamed on the Jewish community of Lincoln. The historical event led to the arrest of over ninety Jews and the execution of eighteen. The story became a lasting fixture of antisemitic blood libel — the false accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christian children — and was repeated in chronicles, ballads, and literature for centuries, including Chaucer's Prioress's Tale.
The ballad itself, dating from the fourteenth century, tells the story with the stark simplicity characteristic of the Scottish and English popular ballad tradition. It makes no argument; it simply narrates, ending with the miraculous ringing of bells and reading of books "without men's hands." The supernatural close is a common ballad device, but the casual cruelty of the story it frames is not supernatural at all — it is a record of what ordinary people believed, and what real communities suffered because of that belief.
The text appears in Hamilton Wright Mabie's A Book of Old English Ballads (1903). It is preserved here as a historical document, not as an endorsement of the hateful fiction at its core.
SHOWING THE CRUELTY OF A JEW'S DAUGHTER
FOUR and twenty bonny boys
Were playing at the ba',
And up it stands him sweet Sir Hugh,
The flower among them a'.
He kicked the ba' there wi' his foot,
And keppit it wi' his knee,
Till even in at the Jew's window
He gart the bonny ba' flee.
"Cast out the ba' to me, fair maid,
Cast out the ba' to me."
"Never a bit," says the Jew's daughter,
Till ye come up to me."
"Come up, sweet Hugh, come up, dear Hugh,
Come up and get the ba'."
"I winna come, I mayna come,
Without my bonny boys a'."
She's ta'en her to the Jew's garden,
Where the grass grew lang and green,
She's pu'd an apple red and white,
To wyle the bonny boy in.
She's wyled him in through ae chamber,
She's wyled him in through twa,
She's wyled him into the third chamber,
And that was the warst o' a'.
She's tied the little boy, hands and feet,
She's pierced him wi' a knife,
She's caught his heart's blood in a golden cup,
And twinn'd him o' his life.
She row'd him in a cake o' lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep,
She cast him in a deep draw-well
Was fifty fathom deep.
When bells were rung, and mass was sung,
And every bairn went hame,
Then ilka lady had her young son,
But Lady Helen had nane.
She row'd her mantle her about,
And sair, sair 'gan she weep;
And she ran unto the Jew's house,
When they were all asleep.
"My bonny Sir Hugh, my pretty Sir Hugh,
I pray thee to me speak!"
"Lady Helen, come to the deep draw-well
'Gin ye your son wad seek."
Lady Helen ran to the deep draw-well,
And knelt upon her knee:
"My bonny Sir Hugh, an ye be here,
I pray thee speak to me!"
"The lead is wondrous heavy, mither,
The well is wondrous deep;
A keen penknife sticks in my heart,
It is hard for me to speak.
"Gae hame, gae hame, my mither dear,
Fetch me my winding-sheet;
And at the back o' merry Lincoln,
It's there we twa sall meet."
Now Lady Helen she's gane hame,
Made him a winding-sheet;
And at the back o' merry Lincoln,
The dead corpse did her meet.
And a' the bells o' merry Lincoln
Without men's hands were rung;
And a' the books o' merry Lincoln
Were read without men's tongue:
Never was such a burial
Sin' Adam's days begun.
Colophon
From A Book of Old English Ballads, edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie, with illustrations by George Wharton Edwards (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903).
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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