Sumer Is I-cumen In

DESCRIPTION: "Sumer is i-cumen in, lhude [loud] sing cuccu!" A round celebrating the beginning of summer and the appearance of various symbols of fertility
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: fourteenth century or earlier (British Museeum MS. Harley 978, generally dated c. 1225-1250)
LONG DESCRIPTION: Sumer is i-cumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed [grows seed] and bloweþ [blooms] meed
And springþ [springs] wde [wood] nu [now].
Sing cuccu!
Awe [ewe] bleteþ after lomb [lamb],
Lhouþ [lows] after calve cu [cow]
Bulluc stereþ [stirs], bukke [buck] verteþ [passes gas, or perhaps frequents the fields]
Murie [merry] sing cuccu
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes þu cuccu,
Ne swik þu nauer nu! [Now nature never ceases].
KEYWORDS: farming lyric nonballad MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (19 citations):
Stevick-OneHundredMiddleEnglishLyrics 3, "(Sumer Is I-cumen In)" (1 text)
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics II, p. 2, "(no title)" (1 text)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, p. 24, ""Sumer Is Icumen In" (1 text plus modernization, 1 tune; Plate 1 on page 1 shows a facsimile of the neumed manuscript)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic I, pp. 10-13, "Sumer Is Icumen In" (1 text, 1 tune; the frontispiece shows a facsimile of the neumed manuscript)
Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution, pp. 10-11, "A Song or Catch In Praise of the Cuckoo" (1 text)
Hirsh-MedievalLyric-MiddleEnglishLyricsBalladsCarols #8, "(Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!)" (1 text, with a photo of the original manuscript)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 260 "Summer Is A-Coming In" (1 text, modernized and otherwise fouled up)
GirlScouts-SingTogether, p. 108, "Summer Is A-Coming In" (2 texts, in Modern and Middle English, somewhat mistranslated.)
DT, ICUMSUM
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3223
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5053
ADDITIONAL: Carleton Brown, editor, _English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1932, p. 13, "Sumer Is Icumen In" (1 text)
Maxwell S. Luria & Richard Hoffman, _Middle English Lyrics_, a Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 1974 p. 4, #3 (text with facsimile)
Reginald Nettel, _Seven Centuries of Popular Song_, Phoenix House, 1956, p. 14, "(no title)" (1 text)
Noah Greenberg, ed., An Anthology of English Medieval and Renaissance Vocal Music, pp. 35-41, "Sumer Is Icumen In" (1 text plus modern arrangement)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #10, p. 15, "Sumer is y-cumen in" (1 text)
Karin Boklund-Lagopolou, _I have a yong suster: Popular song and Middle English lyric_, Four Courts Press, 2002, pp. 44-45, "(Svmer is isumen in)" (1 text)
Bruce Dickins & R. M. Wilson, editors, _Early Middle English Texts_, 1951; revised edition 1952, #XXIV, p. 118, "The Cukoo Song" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Harley 978, folio 11 (with music)
NOTES [805 words]: Possibly the oldest pop song in the English language; it's a wide-open question whether the manuscript was a transcription of a piece from oral tradition, or the source. - PJS
Ritson too quotes an unnamed source who called this "the most ancient English song." Wooldridge observes that this song "contains the earliest canon, and the earliest persistently repeated bass, as yet discovered," and speculates (based on the several erasures clearly visible in the manuscript) that the scribe, probably John Fornsete of Reading Abbey (also called John of Fornsete, after his presumed birthplace of Forncett in Norfolk; Nettel, p. 14), was personally responsible for the arrangement. Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 45, interprets the corrections to mean that the music was actually revised after the manuscript was written, because the handwriting of the manuscript seems too old for the style of performance in the notation. Either suggestion is of course possible, but I wouldn't place too much weight on the erasures; musical notation was evolving quickly at this time, and the scribe might simply have had trouble understanding it and copying it accurately. According to Dickins and Wilson, p. 225, the manuscript is a commonplace book (i.e. a personal miscellany), not a musical collection.
On the other hand, Bennett/Gray, p. 395, argue that the text was composed to fit the tune.
Personally, I'd be inclined to consider this a proto-classical piece (all the more so as it occurs only in the one manuscript) rather than folk, but I'm not going to be dogmatic about it. Chambers, p. 77, splits the difference, noting that the piece "has a refrain, and uses a seasonal theme, but in the form which has come to us it is a part-song for learned musicians" -- in other words, a folk form to be sung by professionals. Davies, p. 310, points out that the instructions for singing are in Latin. Nettel, p. 14, translates them; they say the piece can be sung by four voices, and it requests at least three, with two as an absolute minimum, plus bass. The bass part is supposed to come in with the second lead voice, not the first.
Most scholars date the manuscript to the thirteenth century (e.g. Chambers, p. 77, dates it c. 1240; Stevick, p. 4, dates text and music separately but puts one at 1230-1240 and the other c. 1225; Davies, p. 52, says "earlier thirteenth century"). Manfred Bukofzer, however, prefers the fourteenth, and a number of scholars have argued that the elaborate musical form implies a later date (cited by Davies, p. 310). Luria/Hoffman, p. 5, say that it is usually dated around 1240 but musicologists prefer a date around 1310. Moore, p. 50, cites Bukofzer as saying that the music "could not have been composed prior to 1280, as 'duple rhythm,' a demonstrated characteristic of the music, was previously unknown in England. On this and other grounds he dates the accompaniment ca. 1310."
Luria/Hoffman, pp. 311-313, reprint a short article by A. K. Moore on this poem, referred to as the "Reading Rota" after the town with which it is associated. Moore seems to prefer the late date and thinks the piece an imitation of Welsh folk song.
Looking at the best of my available facsimiles (the full-color copy on p. 50 of BarkerEtAl) and comparing it with the letterforms shown on pp. 27-29 of Moorman, I wonder if those who argue for a later date don't have a point. I'm not a paleographer, and there wasn't that much difference between thirteenth and fourteenth century insular hands anyway -- but the manuscript does have several forms (notably spelling out the word "and," rather than using the upside-down L, ⁊, used as an ampersand at the time) more characteristic of late than early manuscripts. And the open rather than the closed "c", and the "a" without an ascender, are late. Of course, if the manuscript is a copy rather than the autograph, that doesn't mean much.
The use of English and Latin, rather than French, is also an argument for a later date (since French was the more prestigious language starting from the Norman Conquest, with the prestige gradually lessening over time). The use of English may also argue for folk roots.
Nettel, p. 15, points to the fact that it is in Ionian mode as evidence for its folk origin; it is of course the most common mode for folk songs, but the church avoided it and called it "modus lascivus."
We should perhaps note that Harley 978 is not to be confused with another famous Harleian manuscript, Harley 2253, which contains "King Horn" among many other famous poems. "Sumer Is I-cumen In" appears to be the only English song or poem in Harley 978 (Bennett/Gray, p. 395, says that the other pieces in the same book are in French and Latin. Indeed, there is a Latin parallel text to the English of this, but as Davies notes on p. 310, it doesn't really fit the music). - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.8
File: FSWB260B

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.