Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 14 February 1975 — Page 8

THE JEWISH POST

Friday, February 14, 1975

It Rained A Mist

Of An Anti-Jewish Ballad

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By MAX GELTMAN On Feb. 18, 1972, Aunt Ollie Gilbert, the grandmother of all Ozark folk singers, brought tears to the eyes of her Mountain View (Arkansas) audience when she sang the saddest of her sad ballads, “It Rained a Mist.'’ The ballad had moved up slowly into a favorite spot in her wide-flung recitals that took her across the country, including a stopover at the prestigious Smithsonian Folk Festival in the nation’s capital in 1971. Her repertory of mountain music, derived largely from old Scottish and English ballads, had given her a wide reputation. When she sang her favorite of all the sad ballads, her listeners sat in silence as the syllables rolled out into the clear Ozark Mountain air: It rained a mist, it rained all day, Two little boys went out to play, Went out on the grass to play. The first ball tossed it was too high, The next one was too low, The nex* one was in a Jewess room Where no one’s allowed to go, to, go, Where no one’s allowed to go. THAT IS HOW the ballad began. The rest brought on the tears as she told (sadly) how one “little boy,” after being enticed into “the Jewess room” where she “showed him all fine things,” was led into a dark

cellar, “pinned a napkin o'er his face,” and “called for a vessel of gold to catch his heartblood in — To catch his heartblood in.” We are. in fact, back to the ballad of little Hugh of Lincoln, the “younge Hugh” whom Chaucer commemorated in his “Prioress’s Tale”: O younge Hugh of Lincoln, slayn also With cursed Jewes, as it is notable, For it is but a litel while ago . . A “litel while ago!” Actually, the blood-libel which gave birth to the anonymous ballad “Little Sir Hugh, or The Jew’s Daughter,” was based on a ritual murder case that erupted in England in 1255.

OSCAR WILDE is wrong Ar does imitate life. The historica roots of the ballad, Chaucer’j “Tale,” and the anonymou; poem, date back to an earliei ritual murder case in whirl almost the entire Jewish com munity of Norwich was wipec out because Jews were accusec of having cut out the heart o the boy William on Easter Eve 1144, in order to satisfy theii need for blood in the baking of matzohs for the JewisI festival of Passover That is how it began. In 1972 a folk-singer in the Ozarks, brought tears to the eyes of hei listeners as she sang her ver sion of the original ballad listed as Number 155 in Francis James Child's authoritative (Continued on Next Page)

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