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Child himself was repulsed by the ballad’s racism and condemned the bigotry that inspired it. Indeed, there’s something deeply satisfying about reading his words (written 30-40 years before “Fatal Flower Garden” was recorded) after he dutifully spends seven pages reviewing the incendiary medieval record of Hugh’s death and the murderous “Jewish conspiracy” that dispatched him:

“… [T]hese pretended child-murders, with their horrible consequences, are only a part of a persecution which, with all moderation, may be rubricated as the most disgraceful chapter in the history of the human race.” (Child, Ballads, Vol. 3, pp. 240-41)

So, mystery solved. But is there more to the story?

Let’s dig a little deeper …

Beneath …

What becomes of a song with such distasteful origins – is it rejected and abandoned, excised from the canon by people of tact and virtue? “Fatal Flower Garden” retains its place in the Smith collection, seemingly without controversy, and though covered less often than cheerier Anthology tunes like “Fishing Blues” or “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O,” is still performed and occasionally recorded (“Sir Hugh,” on the other hand, courts controversy – long threads exist on-line debating whether to perform the song at all). Presumably, listeners understand that whatever despicable ideas inspired “Garden’s” progenitor can’t justly be laid at the feet of its descendant. Besides, “Garden” is a song not a tract, a work of poetry not of propaganda. And its absent center both obscures its hate crime origins and inexorably alters its meaning.

So why does the song endure – what explains its dark powers of attraction and continued hold on the imagination? Clearly, part of its appeal is its sense of mystery – just as what we don’t know or see can make a scary film scarier, “Garden’s” missing middle imbues an already eerie song with an additional layer of enigma and dread. But more is at work here, and internal evidence provides a key.

Note the substitution of the cringe worthy, racially charged “Jew” (in “Sir Hugh”) with the blander, perhaps less ethno-specific “gypsy” (in “Garden”). Today it’s common to make a letter case distinction between “Gypsy” and “gypsy,” with a corresponding change of definition. But in the past, the terms were interchangeable. The modern “Gypsy” always refers to a race of people: the dark-skinned, nomadic Romani, who – like the Jews – suffered centuries of persecution under Christendom (and were massacred en masse as part of Hitler’s Final Solution). But the lower case “gypsy” has (and had) a broader meaning – it too can mean Romani, but also (according to Merriam-Webster) “one that resembles [my italics] a Gypsy: especially, [a] wanderer.”

In other words, in the parlance of the past, a gypsy needn’t have been Romani at all, but any nomadic outsider of unclear origin – especially one perceived as exotic or mysterious, who dwelt on or drifted through the fringes of mainstream society (e.g., hobos, bohemians, snake oil salesmen, or – more fancifully – witches, spirits, supernatural beings). It’s a semantic shift significant to our subject, because by the time of “Fatal Flower Garden,” with Hugh of Lincoln’s murder a fading or vanished memory, the song had taken on distinct mythic and fairy tale overtones.

Students of depth psychology routinely analyze the underlying structures of dreams and cultural artifacts, locating recurring themes and motifs and trying to elucidate their meanings. “Garden” is rich with such mythic resonances and it’s this archetypal quality, I think, that explains the song’s lasting power.

It also pinpoints its creepiest quality.

In an early scene from film producer Val Lewton’s The Curse of the Cat People (1944) – a haunting evocation of childhood with mythic and fairy tale overtones disguised as a b-movie horror sequel – a lonely girl, rejected by her parents, wanders from home and is beckoned by a witch-like woman’s voice to pass from the safety of the sidewalk into the unfamiliar yard of a mysterious old house. She does so and, once within its gates, is rewarded with a white handkerchief, tossed by the witch-like woman from an upper story window, that floats through the air – radiant against the grim gray-scale of both the film’s black-and-white photography and the child’s melancholy life – and into her hand like a gift from Fairy Land.

The handkerchief symbolizes her entrée into a psychological realm fraught with danger but pregnant with possibility. It’s at this point that the film’s plot truly begins, and its remainder movingly chronicles the girl’s difficult passage from early childhood to pre-pubescence (notably with neither bloody violence nor people dressed as cats).

The basic scenario of a child tempted from the familiar path by an unknown entity and/or a mysterious dwelling place – most often in the woods – is ancient and ubiquitous, found in fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, folk tales about the Russian Baba Yaga and the rural American Bloody Mary, and modern movies that draw from such sources like The Blair Witch Project (1999) and the Evil Dead trilogy (1981/1987/1992). Typically, the child or young person in each sets off a chain of events that are life threatening, but if confronted and resolved offer internal growth and insight.

“Garden,” on the other hand, is striking for its lack of resolution. In it, a boy at play – once Hugh of Lincoln, but now unmoored from any historical identity – is indeed beckoned by a witch-like woman to leave the familiar path. She tempts him with gold, jewels, and (as in Snow White) “an apple sweet.” He follows her into her mysterious house … and there the story ends – dismally, with his cold-blooded, off-screen murder. There’s no triumphant outsmarting of the witch, no thrusting her into the oven, no cathartic struggle at all – only a doomed, dead boy and a disembodied voice.

This is the evilest spell the song casts. It evokes the trappings of fairy tales but delivers nothing but death. Hansel, Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood defeat their nemeses and (presumably) live to adulthood, wiser for their experience. The children and townspeople menaced by Baba Yaga and Bloody Mary escape or fight back. Even Evil Dead’s much abused Ash – though never free of the demonic forces that plague him – wins a round or two before (inevitably) losing again. But like the hapless twentysomethings of Blair Witch, who never escape their own spooky house in the woods nor truly understand what they’re up against, the boy in “Fatal Flower Garden” never has a chance – he perishes passively, terrified and alone.

In the end then, despite its fairy tale trappings, “Garden” is a horror story in disguise. A narrated nightmare, it neither instructs nor elevates, but simply chills our blood and steals our sleep. This needn’t be a worthless experience – good horror can offer insights into primal fears and a safe means for exploring them. But when the fears faced include sudden, cruel death at the hands of unimaginable evil, without hope or any possibility of meaning, it’s probably best to bring along your Hawaiian guitar.

— Steven L. Jones