Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing, cuccu. Here, summer is on its way out, finally, and we're looking forward to the first day we can open the windows with about the same enthusiasm that our forbears in England looked forward to the warm season.
"Sing it loud, Cuckoo." That word lhude, according to the linguistic podcasts I'm enjoying this week, is related to the one found in Ludwig and Ludovicus (a/k/a Louis, or Clovis), and in that context means not so much "loud" as "famous." All those names mean "famous leader," but were transformed from a title to a proper name, much as though we started to name kids "Boss."
These linguistic lectures adopt a leisurely pace. I came in at around lecture 28, by which point the topic had advanced only to 5th-century Roman Britain, when the locals were still speaking some form of Celtic or Latin, and Old English was merely a glimmer in the eye of some European shore-hugging Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Frisian types between modern-day Denmark and Holland who were beginning to feel pressure to relocate somewhere across the water. Now I think I'll go back and start with Lecture One.
"Sumer Is Icumen In" is not Old English. Though it's one of the oldest preserved pieces of English music, it dates from the 13th century, post-Norman Conquest, and therefore features Middle English. If there's already a French influence in there, though, I can't see it; I'll have to await that lecture in the series. Maybe it was a traditional song and therefore something of a linguistic throwback.
Ezra Pound parodied the song in a winter version: "Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham." In his Grand Oratorio "The Seasonings," P.D.Q. Bach rendered it as "Summer is a cumin seed."
YouTube has the whole Richard Thompson concert, which looks worth a try. I may spend all of today listening to things and hardly getting anything read at all. Update: Oh, yeah! This is long, but well worth listening to, if only for the verison of "Oops, I Did It Again," madrigal style.
10 comments:
I remember a chapter of Pogo that was subtitled, "Magna Cum Laude Sing Cuccu..."
The froggie did a-courting' go,
Rowley, powley, gammon and spinach.
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Thompson is a true troubador.
I saw Thompson in the concert tour he did when this album was released. Around here, he appeared in a church which seemed quite appropriate for some of the music. However, I must admit I felt a wee bit uncomfortable when he sang, "Oops...I did it again" - although that ended up being one of my favorite songs on the album. :+)
Now you're talking. :) Early music is the best.
By the way:
The reason you're having trouble identifying a French influence in that song is that it is very minimal. Most of the English language is now Latin-derived via French, but the very most commonly-used words are Anglo-Saxon in extraction.
Too, there was a long period of time in which the Anglo-Norman lords insisted on French at court, but when most of the population carried on speaking Anglo-Saxon. Norman songs like the Lionheart's "Je nuns hons pris" were sung in the French of the day. Genuine English folk songs have minimal French influence.
There is one important word that is from the French, though: "cuccu." The Old English was geac.
I don't mean genuine French, just latinized roots, such as saying "identifying" instead of "finding." Modern English, with its extensive Latin influence, was largely in place by the 16th century. (That last sentence had at least five words from the French/Latin.) I'd have guessed that, with the influx beginning in 1066, you'd see more of it by 1250 or so.
But as you say, even today, the more you stick to old-fashioned short, common words of the sort you find in folksongs, the more you see Germanic rather than Latin roots. I imagine that was even more true of popular music that may have been written down in 1250 but probably had been around much longer than that.
That's part of the charm of being married to a lady who's a native speaker of a Romance language (but has an excellent vocabulary in English)...unlike you and me, she naturally gravitates to the word with the Latin instead of the Germanic roots. (So instead of asking me to hold the "side" of a picture, she'll ask me to hold the "lateral part"...)
Older British books on "how to write well" (I have one from the 1900's) recommend choosing the German over the French-derived word...I suspect for the sake of simplicity over show.
"...a leisurely pace..."
I'll say
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