R
Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvii, VII.
It was in the middle o the midsimmer tyme,
When the scule weans playd at the ba, ba,
Out and cam the Jew’s tochter,
And on little Sir Hew did ca, ca,
And on little Sir Hew did ca.
B.
Initial quh is changed to wh: z, for ȝ, to y.
C.
“‘The Jew’s Daughter,’ which you say was transmitted to Mr Dodsley by a friend of yours, never reached me, and Mr Dodsley says he knows nothing of it. I wish you would prevail on your friend to try to recollect or recover it, and send me another copy by you.” Percy to Paton, Jan. 12, 1769. The copy in the Percy papers is in Paton’s hand.
14. First written: The fairest o them a’.
74. First written: The flower amang them a’.
D.
104. bells were, in the second copy.
E.
92. a swan.
F.
Hume says, p. 5, that he first heard the ballad in early boyhood; “it was afterwards readily identified with Sir Hugh of Lincoln, though the rustic minstrel from whom I received it made no allusion to locality.” One cannot tell whether this copy is the ballad heard in early boyhood.
141. “This and the next verse are transposed.” Hume.
G. a.
24. darest.
b.
12. doth fall.
13. When all.
14. Were out a playing ball.
21. We toss the balls so.
22. We toss the balls so.
23. We’ve tossed it.
24. Where no one dares to.
31. out and came the Jew’s daughter.
33. Said, Come.
41. will not come in, I cannot.
42. playfellows.
43. Nor for And.
44. Which will. After 4:
I must not come, I dare not come,
I cannot come at all,
For if my mother should call for me,
I cannot hear her call.
54. To entice this.
After 5 (compare Miss Perine’s own version, H 6):
She put him in a little chair,
She pinned him with a pin,
And then she called for a wash-basin,
To spill his heart’s blood in.
63. dressing.
72. And the.
8 comes before 6.
83. they threw: deep dark well.
84. Was fifty fathoms.
9 wanting.
J. a.
64. Whereer.
b.
12. It rains both great.
22. And yet it.
33. thou young.
41. I dare not come, I dare not come.
42. Unless my.
43. And I shall be flogged when I get.
53. She laid him on the.
61. The thickest of blood did first come out.
63. The third that came was his dear heart’s blood.
64. Where all his.
7–13 wanting.
K.
There are slight changes in the second copy.
42. all wanting.
51,3. The first as wanting.
L. a.
“After nearly sixty years my memory is not altogether trustworthy, and I am not altogether sure how far I have mixed up my childish recollections with later forms of the ballad which I have read.”
The singer tagged on to this fragment version c of The Maid freed from the Gallows, given at II, 352.
b.
13. For all.
31. it wanting.
41. him in.
44. And wiled the young thing in.
5. wanting.
61. him in through one dark door.
62. she has.
63,4. wanting.
65. She’s laid him.
After 7:
She’s rolled him in a cake of lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep,
And thrown him in St Mary’s well,
’Twas fifty fathoms deep.
When bells were rung, and mass was sung,
And all the boys came home,
Then every mother had her own son,
But Lady Maisy had none.
N.
“The writer was not a little surprised to hear from a group of colored children, in the streets of New York city (though in a more incoherent form), the following ballad. He traced the song to a little girl living in one of the cabins near Central Park, from whom he obtained this version.... The mother of the family had herself been born in New York, of Irish parentage, but had learned from her own mother, and handed down to her children, such legends of the past as the ballad we cite.” Communicated to me by Mr. Newell some considerable time before publication.
O.
3. “One of the Jew’s daughters, ‘a-dressed all in green,’ issues from the garden and says, Come in, etc.”
THE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS
EDITED BY
FRANCIS JAMES CHILD
PART VI
156
QUEEN ELEANOR’S CONFESSION
A. a. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ a broadside, London, Printed for C. Bates, at the Sun and Bible in Gilt-spur-street, near Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, II, No 26, British Museum (1685?). b. Another broadside, Printed for C. Bates in Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, I, No 33 (1685?). c. Another copy, Printed for C. Bates, in Pye-corner, reprinted in Utterson’s Little Book of Ballads, p. 22. d. A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, I, 18.
B. Skene MS., p. 39.
C. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ Buchan’s Gleanings, p. 77.
D. ‘The Queen of England,’ Aytoun, Ballads of Scotland, 1859, I, 196.
E. ‘Queen Eleanor’s Confession,’ Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 247.
F. ‘Earl Marshall,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 1.
Given in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, II, 145, “from an old printed copy,” with some changes by the editor, of which the more important are in stanzas 2–4. F, “recovered from recitation” by Motherwell, repeats Percy’s changes in 2, 3, 104, and there is reason to question whether this and the other recited versions are anything more than traditional variations of printed copies. The ballad seems first to have got into print in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but was no doubt circulating orally some time before that, for it is in the truly popular tone. The fact that two friars hear the confession would militate against a much earlier date. In E there might appear to be some consciousness of this irregularity; for the Queen sends for a single friar, and the King says he will be “a prelate old” and sit in a dark corner; but none the less does the King take an active part in the shrift.[[143]]
There is a Newcastle copy, “Printed and sold by Robert Marchbank, in the Customhouse-Entry,” among the Douce ballads in the Bodleian Library, 3, fol. 80, and in the Roxburghe collection, British Museum, III, 634. This is dated in the Museum catalogue 1720?
Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to Henry II of England in 1152, a few weeks after her divorce from Louis VII of France, she being then about thirty and Henry nineteen years of age. “It is needless to observe,” says Percy, “that the following ballad is altogether fabulous; whatever gallantries Eleanor encouraged in the time of her first husband, none are imputed to her in that of her second.”
In Peele’s play of Edward I, 1593, the story of this ballad is transferred from Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Edward Longshanks and that model of women and wives, Eleanor of Castile, together with other slanders which might less ridiculously have been invented of Henry II’s Eleanor.[[144]] Edward’s brother Edmund plays the part of the Earl Marshall. The Queen dies; the King bewails his loss in terms of imbecile affection, and orders crosses to be reared at all the stages of the funeral convoy. Peele’s Works, ed. Dyce, I, 184 ff.
There are several sets of tales in which a husband takes a shrift-father’s place and hears his wife’s confession. 1. A fabliau “Du chevalier qui fist sa fame confesse,” Barbazan et Méon, III, 229; Montaiglon, Recueil Général, I, 178, No 16; Legrand, Fabliaux, etc., 1829, IV, 132, with circumstances added by Legrand. 2. Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1432, No 78; Scala Celi, 1480, fol. 49;[[145]] Mensa Philosophica, cited by Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, p. 476; Doni, Novelle, Lucca, 1852, Nov. xiii; Malespini, Ducento Novelle, No 92, Venice, 1609, I, 248; Kirchhof, Wendunmuth, No 245, Oesterley, II, 535; La Fontaine, “Le Mari Confesseur,” Contes, I, No 4. 3. Boccaccio, VII, 5.
In 1, 2, the husband discovers himself after the confession; in 3 he is recognized by the wife before she begins her shrift, which she frames to suit her purposes. In all these, the wife, on being reproached with the infidelity which she had revealed, tells the husband that she knew all the while that he was the confessor, and gives an ingenious turn to her apparently compromising disclosures which satisfies him of her innocence. All these tales have the cynical Oriental character, and, to a healthy taste, are far surpassed by the innocuous humor of the English ballad.
Oesterley, in his notes to Kirchhof, V, 103, cites a number of German story-books in which the tale may, in some form, be found; also Hans Sachs, 4, 3, 7b.[[146]] In Bandello, Parte Prima, No 9, a husband, not disguising himself, prevails upon a priest to let him overhear his wife’s confession, and afterwards kills her.
Svend Grundtvig informed me that he had six copies of an evidently recent (and very bad) translation of Percy’s ballad, taken down from recitation in different parts of Denmark. In one of these Queen Eleanor is exchanged for a Queen of Norway. Percy’s ballad is also translated by Bodmer, II, 40; Ursinus, p. 59; Talvj, Charakteristik, p. 513; Döring, p. 373; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, No 51.