The Ballad of the Jew's Daughter

One of my favorite folk songs goes like this (sorry, I can't find a recording):

As I walked out one holiday,


The flakes of snow did fall,

And all the children in the school


Were out a-playing ball.

A little boy threw his ball so high,

He threw his ball so low,


He threw it in a dusky garden


Among the blades of snow.

Out came the neighbor’s youngest daughter


All dressed in fairy green.


“Come in, come in, my lad,” she said,


“You may have your ball again.”

She took him by his little white arm,

and led him through the hall

She took him in a little dark room,

where no one could hear him call.

She sat him down in a golden chair

She fed him with sugar and sweet

She laid him down on a dusty board,

And stabbed him like a sheep.

Pray put my Bible at my head,

My prayer-book at my feet,

And if any of my playmates should call for me,

Pray tell them I'm dead and asleep.

Some take hold of locks of hair

And others the soles of his feet

And drag him down in a deep dry-well

Fifteen fathoms deep.

Some take hold of locks of hair

And others the sole of his feet

And drag him down in a deep dry-well

Where weary travelers sleep.

I love that the murder is so completely unmotivated here. Is she angry about the ball? Is she a serial killer? Is she a fairy or a witch (that sinister green)? And who are the mysterious “others” who show up to get rid of the body?

Recently, reading Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (which I recommend to anyone interested in the history of English poetry) I found that the original of this song is much less mysterious. The “lady” is a Jew's daughter, and naturally she kills the child because she hates Christians and wants their blood. The song is based on the historical case of a 13th-century child murder which was blamed on a dozen of (coincidentally) the richest Jews in England and supposedly witnessed by ALL the Jews in England. Here's the original, and although too explicit for my taste, it has some lovely cruel parts. 

 

The rain rins doun through Mirry-land toune,
Sae dois it doune the Pa;
Sae dois the lads of Mirry-land toune,
Whan they play at the ba.

Than out and cam the Jewis dochter,
Says, Will ye cum in and dine?
'I winnae cum in, I cannae cum in,
Without my play-feres nine.'

Scho powd an apple reid and white,
To intice the young thing in:
Scho powd an apple white and reid,
And that the sweit bairne did win.

And scho has taine out a little pen-knife,
And low down by her gair;
Scho has twin'd the yong thing and his life,
A word he nevir spak mair.

And out and cam the thick, thick bluid,
And out and cam the thin,
And out and cam the bonny herts bluid;
Thair was nae life left in.

Scho laid him on a dressing-borde,
And drest him like a swine,
And laughing said, Gae nou and pley
With your sweit play-feres nine.

Scho rowd him in a cake of lead,
Bade him lie stil and sleip;
Scho cast him in a deip draw-well,
Was fifty fadom deip.

Whan bells wer rung, and mass was sung,
And every lady went hame,
Than ilka lady had her yong sonne,
Bot Lady Helen had nane.

Scho rowd hir mantil hir about,
And sair, sair gan she weip,
And she ran into the Jewis castel,
Whan they wer all asleip.

'My bonny Sir Hew, my pretty Sir Hew,
I pray thee to me speik:'
'O lady, rinn to the deip draw-well,
Gin ye your sonne wad seik.'

Lady Helen ran to the deip draw-well,
And knelt upon her kne:
'My bonny Sir Hew, an ye be here,
I pray thee speik to me.'

'The lead is wondrous heavy, mither,
The well is wondrous deip;
A keen pen-knife sticks in my hert,
A word I dounae speik.

'Gae hame, gae hame, my mither deir,
Fetch me my windling sheet,
And at the back o Mirry-land toun,
It's thair we twa sall meet.'

The Victim/Villain Fallacy

There are two sides to every question: Red Team and Blue Team. You get to pick which side you're on, but you have to be on a side. You can't be neutral and you can't be for or against both sides.

What if I really, really hate them both? Well, if you're not on the Red Team, all the Red Teamers will assume you're a dirty Blue Teamer. And, if you're not on the Blue Team, all the Blue Teamers will assume you're an ignorant Red Teamer.

He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope.

—Catch-22

Can I be on Team Blue and still think their coach sucks? No. Picking a team means you are endorsing everything they currently do and everything they've done in the past, even before you were born.

One team is 100% innocent, the other team is 100% guilty. I say, "Red Team cheated!" This reveals I am on Team Blue. What if Red Team really did cheat? Doesn't matter. My saying something bad about Red is enough to establish I am Blue. The truth value of what I said, or whether I believe it to be true, doesn't matter.

Another way to play this game is the "How can you compare?" tack.

Me: "Red Team Player got arrested for beating up his girlfriend. They should fire him!"
Response: "That's nothing! Blue Team Player murdered six women! How can you compare them?"
Me: "Murder is indeed worse than assault. Okay, fire Blue Team Player too."
Response: "Good. I'm glad we agree Red Team Player did nothing wrong."

What if I try to say something nuanced, like "Red Team has a great goalie but Blue Team has better offense"?

Two possible responses: you can choose not to remember part of this statement. "She said, AND I QUOTE, "Red Team has a great goalie." Therefore, she's on the Red side."
Or, you can assume bad faith. "She's trying to sound fair and balanced, but she can't really believe Blue has good offensive players; if she did, she'd be Blue, and we know she's not Blue, because she said something good about Red."

It's easy enough, for leftists, to imagine confronting a mob of racial bigots, McCarthyites, or religious fundamentalists. The harder test is resistance to public opinion in one's own camp.

--Hitchens

I don't know how to win this game. So far I just settle for pointing it out.

You probably won’t get AIDS

"If you look at the data we have right now, it is very clear what is driving the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It's not sustained heterosexual transmission, it is not IV drug use, it's basically in African American men who have sex with men. HIV in heterosexuals persists only because you have inflow either from other countries, from high prevalence areas for example, or from other risk groups such as intravenous drug users or men who have sex with men."

Landscape of Thorns

Check out this article on communicating the dangers of nuclear waste to humans 10,000 years in the future: my favorite is the "Landscape of Thorns." However, as the article basically concludes, if human beings in the future aren't smart enough to figure out that being around radioactivity is unhealthy, we probably can't help them, and they probably deserve to die out.

The most interesting idioms are the offensive ones

The English really used to hate the Dutch. We’ve all heard of Dutch treat and Dutch courage, but what about other expressions of hateful chauvinism, such as:

Dutch widow (a prostitute)
Dutch bargain (a drunken agreement)
Dutch feast (one at which the host gets drunk before his guests)
Dutch uncle (a brutal adviser)
Dutch reckoning (a non-itemized bill)

I guess the common thread is that something that is 'Dutch' is not what it purports to be, or not how it should be (like an 'Indian giver'). Fascinating!