No. 18 Little Harry Hughes and the Duke’s Daughter
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 hut, rude as the habitation of a recent squatter on the plains, was perched on a rock still projecting above the excavations which had been made on either side, preparatory to the erection of the conventional “brown-stone fronts” of a New York street. Rocks flung by carelessly managed explosions flew over the roof, and clouds of dust were blown by every wind into the unswept hovel. In this unlikely spot lingered the relics of old English folk-song, amid all the stir of the busiest of cities. 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. A pretty melody gave popularity to the verse, and so the thirteenth-century tradition, extinct perhaps in its native soil, had taken a new lease of existence as a song of negro children in New York.
Under the thin disguise of the heading will be recognized the ballad of “Hugh of Lincoln and the Jew’s Daughter,” the occasion of which is referred by Matthew Paris to the year 1255. Chaucer, in exquisite verse, has made his Prioress recount the same story: how the child,
This gemme of chastitè, this emeraude,
And eek of martirdom the ruby bright,
has his throat cut by “false Jewes,” and, cast into a pit, still sings his chant in honor of
This welle of mercy, Christes moder sweet;
and, when discovered, cannot be buried in peace till the magic grain is removed which “that blissful maiden fre” has laid under his tongue.
The conclusion is, in our version, only implied. In that given by Jamieson the murdered child, speaking from the well, bids his mother prepare the winding-sheet, for he will meet her in the morn “at the back of merry Lincoln;” and the funeral service is performed by angels.
It was on a May, on a midsummer’s day,
When it rained, it did rain small;
And little Harry Hughes and his playfellows all
Went out to play the ball.
He knocked it up, and he knocked it down,
He knocked it o’er and o’er;
The very first kick little Harry gave the ball,
He broke the duke’s windows all.
She came down, the youngest duke’s daughter,
She was dressed in green;
“Come back, come back, my pretty little boy,
And play the ball again.”
“I won’t come back, and I daren’t come back,
Without my playfellows all;
And if my mother she should come in,
She’d make it the bloody ball.”64
She took an apple out of her pocket,
And rolled it along the plain;
Little Harry Hughes picked up the apple,
And sorely rued the day.
She takes him by the lily-white hand,
And leads him from hall to hall,
Until she came to a little dark room,
That none could hear him call.
She sat herself on a golden chair,
Him on another close by;
And there’s where she pulled out her little penknife
That was both sharp and fine.
Little Harry Hughes had to pray for his soul,
For his days were at an end;
She stuck her penknife in little Harry’s heart,
And first the blood came very thick, and then came very thin.65
She rolled him in a quire of tin,
That was in so many a fold;
She rolled him from that to a little draw-well
That was fifty fathoms deep.
“Lie there, lie there, little Harry,” she cried,
“And God forbid you to swim,
If you be a disgrace to me,
Or to any of my friends.”
The day passed by, and the night came on,
And every scholar was home,
And every mother had her own child,
But poor Harry’s mother had none.66
She walked up and down the street,
With a little sally-rod67 in her hand;
And God directed her to the little draw-well,
That was fifty fathoms deep.
“If you be there, little Harry,” she said,
“And God forbid you to be,
Speak one word to your own dear mother,
That is looking all over for thee.”
“This I am, dear mother,” he cried,
“And lying in great pain,
With a little penknife lying close to my heart,
And the duke’s daughter she has me slain.
“Give my blessing to my schoolfellows all,
And tell them to be at the church,
And make my grave both large and deep,
And my coffin of hazel and green birch.
“Put my Bible at my head,
My busker68 (?) at my feet,
My little prayer-book at my right side,
And sound will be my sleep.”