Trivia / Steeleye Span

• Black Sheep Hit: When people think of Steeleye, they think of an electric folk/folk-rock band with a repertoire drawn from the British Isles' folk tradition. However, their first UK hit, in 1972 was an a capella Christmas song, "Gaudete," sung in Latin.
• Rarely Performed Song: The band no longer performs the old English folk song "Little Sir Hugh," despite the fact it is thought of as one of their best. It was pointed out to them that although the song in its various forms has been around for at least six centuries, it isn't just a medieval ditty about cruel child murder. The ballad, about a woman dressed in green who slaughters a little boy to collect his blood in a bucket, is about "blood libel", an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory accusing Jews of kidnapping children for Human Sacrifice, which was used to justify numerous pogroms against Jewish communities since the middle ages (including the expulsion of England's Jewish population in the late 1100s). In Steeleye Span's version, the anti-Semitic elements were removed, but they finally accepted that the ballad is extremely anti-Semitic and dropped it from their performances.

---