Sir Hugh

In some versions the Jew's daughter catches the blood in a basin and puts a prayer book at his head and a bible at his feet.

Henry III's (r. 1216–1272) court purchased and abused Jewish loans to acquire land from less well off barons and knights, causing many to blame Jews for their insecurity.

An admission of ritual killing was extracted from a Jew named Copin by John Lexington, a member of the Royal court and the brother of the Bishop of Lincoln.

There is an Anglo-Norman ballad (medieval French), likely composed while Henry III was still alive and probably with knowledge of the city of Lincoln.

It is possible to relate elements in the older versions to the medieval stories; attempts to reconstruct the probable content of the original have been made.

McCabe says that the "earliest texts of Sir Hugh are Scottish … [and] preserve the medieval saint's legend in its most coherent form.

[12] Some of the later versions, particularly the American texts known as The Jew's Garden, incorporate elements of another song about child murder, Lamkin.

"[14] Roud and Bishop make a similar point: The subject matter … is disturbing, and reminds us that folklore is not always nice and cosy.

Indeed, racists, xenophobes, political zealots and religious fundamentalists have always used legends, rumours, songs, jokes and other lore to support and spread their beliefs and to indoctrinate their young, and in particular to denigrate and stereotype outsiders and the victims of their bigotry.

For Göller, one side of the ballad is a fairy tale, onto which anti-semitic elements have been added, and at later dates, dropped and forgotten.

[15] He details how the anti-semitic elements are largely dropped in the American versions, and even the violence is removed, as the ballad in some cases becomes a nursery rhyme.

He speculates that a version existed prior to its merger with the Hugh of Lincoln story, which "must have been similar to the Frog Prince tale in respect to love and the introduction to its mysteries".

Fate appears in the person of the Jewish girl, who, as an incarnation of Hope and Youth, allures him into a secret chamber, and kills him like a sacrificial animal.

"[17] On the other hand, his host remembers the accusations of ritual murder, "the incitation of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulis".

[19] Victorian collectors were surprised to find evidence of a ballad featuring a blood libel, and two wrote books on the subject.

[20] In the same year, and unknown to Halliwell, Abraham Hume wrote the book Sir Hugh of Lincoln, or, an Examination of a Curious Tradition respecting the Jews, with a notice of the Popular Poetry connected with it.

[21] One of the earliest professional recordings of the song was by A. L. Lloyd on "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol 2" in 1956, produced by Kenneth Goldstein, himself a Jew.

Edward Francis Rimbault printed a version of the ballad in his Musical Illustrations of Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry of 1850.