AMONG the holdings of the British Library is a small volume from Clonmel containing a unique version of Child ballad 155, 'Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter.' Additional Manuscript 20099 was purchased in 1854 from Thomas Crofton Croker's estate, at which time the British Museum acquired several manuscript and blackletter ballads pertaining to Irish history and life.' Add. Ms. 20099, however, is composed largely of legends 'taken down' according to 'A.H.B., its anonymous collector, 'in the words in which they were related,' but she admits that much of its contents were 'already published,' although she claims to have been 'familiar [with the material] in the days of a happy childhood.'2 The ballad which is transcribed in the MS is described as 'very ancient' though the collector is aware that it appears in more than oral form and, indeed, 'may not [have] be[en] out of print' in 1826 when A.H.B. transcribed it for Croker.3 Though her informant, like Mrs Brown of Falkland from whom Francis James Child took his principal version of this ballad, 'may never [have seen]... one of [her contributions]... in print or manuscript,4 it is clear that A.H.B. is aware of the ballad's literary existence even as she recognized that it circulated orally and was 'sung in Ireland to a very wild & melancholy tho' monotonous air.'5 Unfortunately, she provided no further information either about its method of performance or the music to which it was sung, details of considerable interest considering the formal nature of the verse in contrast with the violence of its subject. From the number of ballads traced to Irish sources, Child concluded that 'the remnants of Anglo-Irish balladry might with reasonable expectation be looked for in Ireland, where as yet no systematic attempt has been made to form a collection of that kind.6 About the same time Charles Gavan Duffy remarked on the British-and perhaps literarysource of Anglo-Irish song, observing that 'many of the ballads in Percy are more familiarly known here (in Ireland) than in England.'7 Duffy's reference to Percy's collection is not inappropriate for, despite informants such as the Clonmel resident who came from 'an old Protestant family,'s and thus may have had personal contacts with Britain, Ireland beyond the Pale remained largely Celtic until the nineteenth century when English became more common in the countryside.9 As a result, those ballads which found 'favour with a poetic people,' were as likely to have originated from printed as from oral sources. This derivation does not diminish their importance either for Irish literary history or for the history of the ballad. One of Child's less valued informants, Margaret Reburn, presented him with a most 'strange and interesting variant' of 'Sir Hugh' which, although probably extracted from books, '...enlarg[ed] our knowledge, especially as [her ballads]...suggest that some Scottish ballads were known in the English-speaking part of Ireland in the nineteenth century.' 'The Cruel Jew's Wife' similar to Child's version 'T' extracted from M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs,12 which later was reprinted by Bernard Bronson as ballad 155, item 24, and to the variant which Bronson published as item 25, are