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| Paleography Exercises |
| Four part round, mid 13th century (British Library, Harley 978, f.11v). |
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This page shows a song, set as a four part round, with words in both Middle English and Latin, complete with musical notation. There are Latin instructions for the singing of the song. The script is a Gothic textura of a neat and clear type, but not the most formal grade. The English and Latin texts bear no relation to one another. The former is a jolly bucolic celebration of spring, with references to animals and procreation and farting. The latter is a verse on Christ's Passion. The English texts is written in black, the Latin in red, with the singing instructions at the lower right in both black and red. Blue and red coloured capitals are the only adornment. The crown at the bottom of the page is the stamp of the British Museum (Vandals!). |
| It is not clear whether a Latin religious song has been parodied by the laity in English, or whether a joyful folk ditty has been appropriated by the church. As the song is in a volume that belonged to Reading Abbey, and as the full complexity of the song is only in the English version, I suspect that the clergy have used a popular song to try to turn the minds of the people to more elevated things. In the words of a much, much later proselytiser of Christian virtues, "Why should the devil have all the best tunes?" The Latin version seems to also have a piece of rather strained agricultural imagery, as if to make some sort of link to the other. The song can be sung in four parts, with each singer coming in sequentially after the previous singer has completed the first phrase. There is a "foot" or pes, which involves other singers in a continually repeated refrain with a lot of "cuccu" in it as a background. The page is in a codex of miscellaneous works in Latin and French, none of which are liturgical. It may possibly have belonged to a monk named in the manuscript, who was charged with sexual incontinence - everyone's favourite medieval stereotype. Cuccu, cuccu! |
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