“Sumer is Icumen in”: The Oldest Song in the English Language May Also Be One of Its Worst
Song: “Sumer is Icumen in” by the Hilliard Ensemble
We’ve talked about some pretty old music on this blog, all with fascinating backstories. This doomed, encrypted Cathar chant mourned the inevitable end of their religious movement. This soaring praise poem was written by a powerful Viking chieftain whose head was bashed in with a rock. This 3,000-year-old biblical psalm is still sung, lyrics unchanged, in its original language of ancient Hebrew.
As someone who studied a fair amount of medieval history and literature in college, I was giddily rhapsodic (ha ha) to explore the oldest recorded secular song in the English language- “Sumer is Icumen in” (Middle English for “Summer Is A-Coming In”), dating from the mid-13th century. If it was still being performed 850 years later, it must be a profound beacon of musical brilliance, right? A revolutionary breakthrough in composition? An illuminating glimpse into the dim haze of a feudal society?
Nope! It’s just the earliest surviving copy of an English-language secular summer hit, which is why anyone still pays it attention at all. Like many songs designed for a season of boozing, flirting, sunbathing, and skinny-dipping, it’s vapid and dimwitted. The verses run as such:
Summer has arrived,
Loudly sing, cuckoo!The ewe is bleating after her lamb,
The cow is lowing after her calf;
The bullock is prancing,
The billy-goat farting,
Sing merrily, cuckoo!
A popular ditty about farm animals breaking wind mortified the austere and omnipotent Catholic Church, which created a whole different set of Latin lyrics to the same tune- but about the majesty of the Crucifixion. (They’re also pretty banal, too.) Unfortunately for the 13th-century religious establishment, this was about as effective and durable as slopping discount off-brand Cold Patch on driveway potholes before a Yukon winter. Today, the only popular online articles about this song’s language focus on the first documented use of the word “fart.” To whoever runs Google’s search engine optimization: there is an absolutely livid medieval cleric up there fuming by the Pearly Gates. Consider yourself warned.
Probably the sole interesting aspect about “Sumer is Icumen in” is its structure. It’s one of the first surviving examples of a six-part polyphonic round (or rota). We all know rounds like “Row Row Row Your Boat” from those halcyon crayon-eating days at pre-K, but this one kicks it up a notch. Unlike earlier, simpler rotas, it’s arranged for six voices (although you could make do with only four if the bubonic plague rolled through). It also employs polyphony- two or more overlapping melodies- which was championed by the leading musical authority of the day, France’s Notre Dame School. But only in moderation: a prominent Chartres bishop warned that too much of this blissful sound “is more fitted to excite lust than devotion.”
No one’s exactly sure who wrote “Sumer is icumen in,” but there are two leading candidates: composer W. de Wycombe or monk John of Fornsete. The earliest copy is a manuscript dating from the mid-thirteenth century that was likely copied at Oxford and later housed at Reading Abbey. One of its possible owners was a horny, disgraced music-loving monk named William of Winchester, who was hauled before the local bishop for shacking up with numerous women (including a nun.) But why did this particular document survive upheaval like Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, the English Civil War, and the WWII bombing of London?
Through sheer luck. This folk ditty is an example of how sometimes artifacts are preserved by total accident. I’m sure there were plenty of other, better songs popular at the same time, but for whatever reason they didn’t make it to the present. So we’re stuck with this one. But hey- at least it contains the word “fart.”
Hey hey! Thanks for visiting- your presence is warmly welcomed. Please correct me if I accidentally got something wrong. If there are any songs, artists, or genres you’d love to learn more about, I’m always down for recommendations! This blog is free to read (and always will be) due to a fair amount of academic traffic, but you can always buy me a coffee (aka put a tip in my jar) if you enjoyed this article.
