Alasdair Roberts singing Little Sir Hugh surprised me too, when I first heard it.

I was glad to hear that he prefaces it on his recording with some context - that he in no way condones the sentiments.

It did make me wonder why he chose not to introduce it that way when I heard him singing it live.


Roberts is deeply into his musty antiquarianism. Like Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, Julian Cope (and psychegeographers and conspiracy theorists the world over), Roberts loves his old tomes, lore and esoteric societies and cults.

I imagine he felt he could sing this song because he assumed he was amongst like-minded people, who would simply presume that he couldn't possibly be condoning the sentiments, who already knew of his politics and who would treat the performance of the song as a piece of dredged-up scholarship, from a time when a Jew was presented as a bogeyman like "Long Lankin" (another song also in Roberts repertoire).

I imagine Roberts thought he was presenting hate as nothing but hate, and crediting his audience with the maturity to understand that. (After all, his lyrics are generally anti-war, anti-patriarchy, and, in their oblique and abstract way, on the Left.)

Having said all that, I don't think you can automatically credit the audience that way - and vice versa, you can't assume the audience is au fait with where you're coming from.