Since his time several impostors have appeared at intervals under the name and character of the Wandering Jew; whose several histories may be seen in Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible. See also the Turkish Spy, vol. ii. book 3, let. 1. The story that is copied in the following ballad is of one, who appeared at Hamburgh in 1547, and pretended he had been a Jewish shoemaker at the time of Christ's crucifixion.—The ballad however seems to be of later date. It is preserved in black-letter in the Pepys collection.
[This wondrous myth has found its way into many literatures, and numerous theories have been brought forward to account for its universality; but the only foundation for it appears to be in Christ's words—"tarry till I come." Mons. Paul Lacroix, however, suggests that it took its rise in a grand and beautiful allegory in which the Hebrew race were personified under the figure of the Everlasting Wanderer. Professor Child makes the following pertinent remark in his English and Scottish Ballads (vol. viii. p. 78). "It will be noticed that in the second form of the legend, the punishment of perpetual existence, which gives rise to the old names, Judæus non mortalis, Ewiger Jude, is aggravated by a condemnation to incessant change of place, which is indicated by a corresponding name, Wandering Jew, Juif Errant, &c."
In the Middle Ages it was supposed by some that Cain was the Wandering Jew, but the Mahometan belief was fixed upon Samiri, who, during the absence of Moses, enticed the people to worship the golden calf. In G. Weil's The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, 1846 (p. 127), we read, "Moses then summoned Samiri, and would have put him to death instantly, but Allah directed that he should be sent into banishment. Ever since that time he roams like a wild beast throughout the world; everyone shuns him and purifies the ground on which his feet have stood; and he himself, whenever he approaches men, exclaims, 'Touch me not.'" (Quoted in Buckle's Common Place Book. Works, vol. ii. p. 502, 1872.)
The legend has been localized in various parts of the world and connected with other myths. According to Mr. Baring Gould, a similar curse to that under which the Wandering Jew is living is supposed to have been inflicted upon the gipsies, on account of their refusal to shelter the Virgin and Child in the flight into Egypt.
The last recorded appearance of the Wandering Jew was at Brussels in April, 1774, and the wanderer's name was Isaac Laquedem. The name of the Hamburgh impostor, mentioned above by Percy, was Ahasuerus.]
When as in faire Jerusalem
Our Saviour Christ did live,
And for the sins of all the worlde
His own deare life did give;
The wicked Jewes with scoffes and scornes 5
Did dailye him molest,
That never till he left his life,
Our Saviour could not rest.