“Sumer Is Icumen In”

Edited by Jack Lynch

One of the most famous Middle English poems is a song, written in or near Reading around the middle of the thirteenth century — say, 1240–60 — a bit more than a century before Chaucer started his career. The text appears in British Library MS Harley 978, fol. 11^v. I’ve consulted images of the original and compared them to various published transcriptions.

Things that can’t be explained in a word or two get fuller treatment in the “Notes” section at the bottom of the text.

“Sumer Is Icumen In”

Sumer is icumen in	has come
Lhude sing cuccu	loudly
Groweþ sed
and bloweþ med	mead bloweth (the meadow blooms)
and springþ þe wde nu	sprouts — forest
Sing cuccu

Awe bleteþ after lomb	ewe — bleateth
lhouþ after calue cu	loweth — cow
Bulluc sterteþ	leaps
bucke uerteþ	stag
murie sing cuccu	merry

Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu	thou
ne swik þu nauer nu	stop — thou — now
Sing cuccu nu · Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu · Sing cuccu nu.

Notes

Sumer: Though it’s the source of our word summer, it seems the word also covered what we call spring.
uerteþ: Critics differ on how to translate this. The Middle English Dictionary speaks for the majority in reading uerteþ as a form of ferten, defined as “To break wind, fart; also, to make indecent or unseemly sounds.” Others, though, think it means something like “cavorts.”