Thirty Days Hath September

DESCRIPTION: "Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine in every leap year."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1849 (Halliwell); the earliest manuscript is said to be from the first half of the fifteenth century
KEYWORDS: nonballad MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 469, "Thirty Days Hath September" (1 text plus various related texts)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #328, p. 180, "(Thirty Days Hath September)"
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 50, "Thirty Days Hath September" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3571
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5649
cf. Sutton-Smith-NZ-GamesOfNewZealandChilden/FolkgamesOfChildren, p. 64, "(Thirty days has September, All the rest I can't remember)" (1 parody text suggesting looking at the calendar on the wall)
ADDITIONAL: Rossell Hope Robbins, _Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Century_, Oxford University Press, 1952, #68, "Days in the Months" (1 short text)
Maxwell S. Luria & Richard Hoffman, _Middle English Lyrics_, a Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 1974, p. 109, #106 (no title) (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT:London, British Library, MS. Harley 2341, folio 5
MANUSCRIPT: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS. Mostyn Welsh 129, folio 3
MANUSCRIPT: Ripon Minster Library, Cathedral MS (added in the flyleaf of a copy of Cicero's Letters)
MANUSCRIPT: San Marino, Henry Huntington Library MS. HU 1051, folio 48
MANUSCRIPT: Davies Cooke 21 (LOST manuscript)
Roud #20085
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Dirty Days Hath September" (parody)
NOTES [234 words]: Robbins's version of this runs
Thirti dayes hath nouembir,
April, iune, and septembir;
Of xxviijti is but oon,
And all the remenaun xxxti and j.
Obviously the same piece, even if the words have wandered a little over the years!
This is from the British Library manuscript Harley 2341 (folio 5), but the Index of Middle English Verse lists four other manuscript versions. The British Library web site states that the manuscript is primarily a "Prayer manual with a calendar (ff. 2v-13), Psalter of Jerome, and prayers to Christ, the Virgin Mary, and various saints"; it is dated to the first half of the fifteenth century. Much of the text is in Latin; based on the IMEV, this is the only piece of Middle English verse in it.
A scan of the page with this particular verse can be found at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMINBig.ASP?size=big&IllID=56506
It is interesting to see that this verse, despite being out of place in such a volume, is clearly from the scribe of the codex, and decorated in the same style, although not as elaborately as the calendar above it.
Of the other manuscripts, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS. Mostyn Welsh 129 has only two other Middle English items; the Huntington manuscript three, the Ripon manuscript has none at all, the Cooke manuscript as far as known had none. This seems to have been a bit of lore with no "folk" associations. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: OO2469

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