A collection of ancient and modern Scottish ballads, etc

SIO
SIR HUGH
[In the dark ages the prejudices against the Jews gave rise
to many stories of their cruelties to Christians, which
were fostered by the priests, and believed by the people.
The subject on which this ballad is founded, is a suppos-
ed murder committed by the Jews at Lincoln on a boy,
in the reign of Henry III.—While amusing himself at an
innocent pastime with other youths, near a Jew's house.
Sir Hugh strikes the ball through the window; he soli-
cits the Jew's daughter to throw it back to him, but she
refuses, and endeavours to entice him into the house,,
which he at last enters ; when in her power, she puts him
to death, and to conceal her guilt, throws his body into
a. deep well ; his mother makes every search for him,
and in her lamentation invokes his spirit to tell her where
he is laid ; the poet here calls to his aid the supersti-
tion of the times, makes the boy answer his mother from
the bottom of the well, meet her at an appointed place,
and sets the bells a-ringing without human aid. Miracles
such as these were not only current, but implicitly be-
lieved, and are even at this day not discredited.]
A.' THE boys of merry Linkin,
War playing at the ba*.
An' up it stands him sweet Sir Hugh^
The flower among them a'.