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HUGH OF LINCOLN. 137 |
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the sainted infant, and drawings were made of the relics, which may be seen among the works of the artist Grimm in the British Museum.
Several stories of the same tenor are reported by the English chroniclers. It may be doubted whether there is a grain of truth in any of them, although it would be no wonder if the atrocious injuries inflicted on the Jews should, in an instance or two, have provoked a bloody retaliation, even from that tribe whose badge has always been sufferance. The annual sacrifice of a Christian child, in mockery of the crucifixion of Jesus, is on a par for credibility with the miracles which are said to have followed the death of those innocents.
The exquisite tale which Chaucer has put into the mouth of the Prioress exhibits nearly the same inci-. dents as the following ballad. The legend of Hugh of Lincoln was widely famous. Michel has published an Anglo-Norman ballad, (Hugo de Lincolnia^) on the subject, which appears to be almost contemporary with the event recorded by Matthew Paris, and is certainly of the times of Henry III. The versions of the English ballad are quite numerous. We give here those of Percy, Herd, and Jamieson, and two others in the Appendix. Besides these, fragments have been printed in Sir Egerton Brydges's Restitute, i. 381, Halliwell's Ballads and Poems respecting Hugh of Lincoln, (1849,) and in Notes and Queries, vol. viii. 614, ix. 320, xii. 496. The most complete of all the versions is to be found in the new edition of the Musical Museum, vol. iv. p. 500; but that copy is evidently made up from others previously published. See, for a collection of most of the poetry, and of much |
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