First line of the manuscript. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The year is 1250 and nothing much is different, it seems!
This ancient English song, the earliest known with words and musical notation printed together, is recorded in Thomas Warton‘s History of English Poetry, itself an ancient book from the 1700’s. Try to figure out the meaning of this older version of our language and enjoy!
Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.
Sumer is i-cumin in—
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!
To hear a sung rendition of it in a sweetly natural setting, consider viewing the movie, “Sarah, Plain and Tall“. This delightful version of the popular book of the same title speaks volumes to those of us who hunger for a lost childhood.
If you like it, your friends will, too. Tell them:
Katharine is a writer, speaker, women's counselor, and professional mom. Happily married over 50 years to the same gorgeous guy. She loves cooking amazing homegrown food, celebrating grandbabies, her golden-egg-laying hennies, and watching old movies with popcorn.
Her writing appears at Medium, Arkansas Women Bloggers, Contently, The Testimony Train, Taste Arkansas, Only in Arkansas, and in several professional magazines and one anthology.
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2 thoughts on “Saturday Sayings: Summer!”
Hard to follow these days because of the changed spellings -but I get the gist and as you say, nothing much has really changed!
Hello, b.i.b., and WELCOME to Home’s Cool!
Yes, it is hard to follow at first, I’ve heard it and studied it, so it gets through to me, but it took a while. I guess I just get amazed at the distance between us and the author, and the raelization we can still make sense of it. Maybe I should add the translation though?
Hard to follow these days because of the changed spellings -but I get the gist and as you say, nothing much has really changed!
Hello, b.i.b., and WELCOME to Home’s Cool!
Yes, it is hard to follow at first, I’ve heard it and studied it, so it gets through to me, but it took a while. I guess I just get amazed at the distance between us and the author, and the raelization we can still make sense of it. Maybe I should add the translation though?