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The English Ballad of Judas Iscariot
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Unusual interest attaches to the ballad of Judas, not only because the manuscript in which it is found antedates by two centuries the manuscript of any other English popular ballad, but also because the story it tells is very nearly unique. The manuscript, Trinity College, Cambridge, B. 14. 39, was written in the 13th century; just where is uncertain. The ballad has been frequently printed, but not correctly until 1904, in the Cambridge Edition of the Ballads. It was Professor Child who first recognized the Judas poem as a ballad; but no one has questioned his judgment.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1916
References
1 The manuscript has had something of a history; cf. M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in … Trinity College, Cambridge, i, pp. 438 ff. (no. 323, § 17). Professor Skeat believed that the scribe was a Norman. Dr. James suggests that“ the occurrence of verses on Robert Grosseteste may be construed as bearing on the provenance of the ms.”
2 Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, 1841, i, p. 144; Mätzner, Altenglische Sprachproben, 1867, i, p. 114; Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882, i, p. 242 (no. 23) and v, p. 288. The Cambridge Edition of the Ballads says the Judas ballad was first printed in 1845, but the first edition of the Reliquiae Antiquae was in 1841.
3 The manuscript has .ii. at the end of lines 8, 25, and 30. Wright omitted this sign, and did not divide the poem into stanzas. Professor Child had seen only Wright's printed copy. In the Cambridge Edition Professor Kittredge, who had a transcript of the ballad made by Skeat after the manuscript was rediscovered in 1896, recognized the strophic device (indicated in the manuscript by .ii.) of repeating the last line of a stanza as the first line of the following stanza (as in st. 5, 14, 17); but it is very curious that Professor Child apparently recognized this device in stanza 14, and overlooked it in the other two cases.—The language of the ballad is Southern. Following Mätzner, Child emended Wright's s in meist, heiste, etc. (lines 6, 19, 21, 22, 28, 31, 33, 34, of the Cambridge Edition) to h. In the Cambridge Edition the s, which is the manuscript reading, is restored. I think it is likely that the scribe miswrote s for 
; at any rate, the phenomenon is exceedingly odd.
4 Cf. Legen
aa Aurea, ed. Graesse, ch. xlv. This legend is at least as old as the 12th century, and enjoyed an immense popularity throughout Europe. I have been investigating its history for some time, and hope to publish before very long the results of my study.
5 Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, Part, xx; etc. And cf. Budge, Book of the Bee, p. 95; and R. Duval, Littérature Syriaque, p. 116.
6 Leopold Haupt und J. E. Schmaler, Volkssagen der Wenden, i, pp. 276-8 (no. cclxxxiv), Grimma, 1841. The term ‘Wends’ is here used in the narrow sense, meaning the inhabitants of Lusatia (Ober-und Nieder-Lausitz).
7 Cf. Pitrè, Fiabe, novelle e racconti, Palermo, 1875, i, p. cxxxviii, where after the betrayal Jesus says to Judas: ‘Repent, Judas, for I pardon you ‘; but he went away and hanged himself on a tamarind tree.
8 That is, the English and the Wendish.
9 St. 9 reads:
He drou hym selue bi 
be cop, bat al it lauede ablode;
be cop, 
bat al it lauede ablode;
be Iewes out of Iurselem awenden he were wode.This is just after he has become aware of his loss.
10 Patrologia Orientalis, ii, 2, Les Apocryphes Coptes, I, Les Évangiles des Douze Apôtres. Edited and translated by E. Revillout. Paris, 1904. This fragment is the 5th, pp. 156-7.
11 M. S. L. 13, 1802. Other Fathers regarded it as not so early.
12 Compare the Provençal Passion, still in manuscript, in which an early version of the usual legend of parricide and incest is found, at the end of which Jesus promises to Judas's wife and two children a tithe of the company's receipts for their support. MS. Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), nouv. acq. fr. 4232, fol. 32v. It must be remembered, however, that this wife in the Coptic Gospel can have no connexion with the mother-wife of Judas in the mediæval vitae Judae.
13 Historia Jeschuae Nazareni, Leyden, 1705, p. 53.
14 Here it is an imaginary city, Laisch (Latium?). Cf. Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen, Berlin, 1902, p. 163 n. For a somewhat analogous incident in the Koran cf. Krauss, p. 199.
15 Mt. 14, 15 ff.; 15, 32 ff. Mk. 6, 35 ff.; 8, 1 ff.
16 A travesty of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is found in the Huldreich version, p. 51. On the journey from Rome to Jerusalem (the same on which Judas later went to Laisch to buy food) Jesus, Peter, and Judas stopped at a small inn, and mine host had only one goose to offer his three guests. Jesus then took the goose and said, “This is verily not sufficient for three persons; let us go to sleep, and the whole goose shall be his who shall have the best dream.” Whereupon they lay down to slumber. In the middle of the night Judas rose up and ate the goose. When morning came the three met, and Peter said, “I dreamed I sat at the foot of the throne of Almighty God.” And to him Jesus answered, “I am the son of Almighty God, and I dreamed that thou wert seated near me; my dream is therefore superior to thine, and the goose shall be mine to eat.” Then Judas said, “And I, while I was dreaming, ate the goose.” And Jesus sought the goose, but vainly, for Judas had devoured it.—Similar tales are reported by Vansleb, who travelled in Egypt in the seventeenth century. Cf. Gustave Brunet, Les Évangiles Apocryphes, 2nd edition, Paris, 1863. The tale of a person outwitting his two companions in this way is, of course, very widespread. It is doubtless of Oriental origin, and got into the literature of the West probably through the Disciplina Clericalis. Cf. Contes Moralisés de Nicole Bozon, ed. by L. T. Smith and P. Meyer, Soc. des anc. textes franç., Paris, 1889, p. 293. It is one of the exempla of Jacques de Vitry. Bozon tells it to illustrate the proverb: ‘Qui tot coveite tot perde.‘ M. Meyer believes that the Gesta Romanorum (Oesterley, ch. 106) drew from Bozon rather than from Petrus Alphonsi. The Alphabet of Tales, however, gives Petrus as its source for the story (ccxxxvm, ed. by H. H. Banks, E. E. T. S., p. 166). Goedeke, Orient und Occident, in (1864), p. 191, gives several other references, to Eastern and Western versions, and shows its occurrence in Æsopic literature. (I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for references to Goedeke, Bozon, and the Alphabet of Tales.) Judas's connexion with this tale seems to be entirely limited to the East. In the Toldoth, of course, it is part of his rôle always to get the better of Jesus.