Some translate "bucke uerteþ" as "the buck-goat turns", but the current critical consensus is that the line is "the stag farts", a gesture of virility indicating the stag's potential for creating new life, echoing the rebirth of Nature from the barren period of winter.[2]
Latin lyrics (sacred)
This work is also one of the earliest examples of music with both religious and secular lyrics, though the secular ones are perhaps better known. It is not clear which came first, but the religious lyrics, in Latin, are a reflection on the sacrifice of the Crucifixion.
Latin
- Perspice Christicola†
- que dignacio
- Celicus agricola
- pro uitis vicio
- Filio
- non parcens exposuit mortis exicio
- Qui captiuos semiuiuos a supplicio
- Vite donat et secum coronat
in celi solio
†written "χρ̅icola" in the manuscript
|
English translation
- Observe, Christian,
- such honour!
- The heavenly farmer,
- due to a defect in the vine,
- not sparing the Son,
- exposed him to the destruction of death.
- To the captives half-dead from torment,
- He gives them life and crowns them with himself
- on the throne of heaven.
|
At the Olympic Games
This traditional English round was used during the opening ceremony in Munich 1972. Children danced to the music around the track of the stadium.
In parody
This piece was parodied in "Ancient Music" by American Poet, Ezra Pound (Lustra collection, 1913-1915):
- Winter is icumen in,
- Lhude sing Goddamm,
- Raineth drop and staineth slop,
- And how the wind doth ramm!
- Sing: Goddamm.
- Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
- An ague hath my ham.
- Freezeth river, turneth liver,
- Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.
- Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
- So 'gainst the winter's balm.
- Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
- Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
The song is also parodied by P. D. Q. Bach as "Summer is a cumin seed" for the penultimate movement of his Grand Oratorio The Seasonings.
Mark Alburger's Mary Variations includes the movement Mary Is Icumen In, which maps Lowell Mason's Mary Had a Little Lamb over the medieval round.
In film
The song was used at the climax of the 1973 film The Wicker Man in a mixed translation by Peter Shaffer:
- Sumer is Icumen in,
- Loudly sing, cuckoo!
- Grows the seed and blows the mead,
- And springs the wood anew;
- Sing, cuckoo!
- Ewe bleats harshly after lamb,
- Cows after calves make moo;
- Bullock stamps and deer champs,
- Now shrilly sing, cuckoo!
- Cuckoo, cuckoo
- Wild bird are you;
- Be never still, cuckoo!
It was sung in the 1982 animated film The Flight of Dragons by the knight Sir Orin Neville-Smythe to drown out the sound of the sand merks. It was also recited in Woody Allen's 1982 film A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy by the character Leopold.
The song was used in the 1993 film Shadowlands, the story of the romance between C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. In that film, a choir of men and boys greets the sun at dawn on May Day with the song. In the soundtrack recording released on Angel, the choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, was featured.
The song was also used in the 1991 television movie Sarah, Plain and Tall, based on the children's book of the same name by Patricia MacLachlan. Sarah, played by Glenn Close, sings the song.
The round sung by the mice in the 1974 British Children's TV Show Bagpuss, starting with the words "We will fix it...", is to the tune of "Sumer is icumin in".
In literature
In Michel Faber's novella The Courage Consort, a vocal group spontaneously bursts into the song while returning from a tense sojourn in the Belgian countryside during which one of their members has died.
The song plays an important role in the 1946 novella "Vintage Season" by Henry Kuttner & C L Moore. This story was later made into the 1992 film "Timescape".
Notes
Source
- Albright, Daniel (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-01267-0.
External links
|
|
