Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu.[1]
[1] For facsimile of the MS., music, and valuable remarks,
see Chappell, 'Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the
Olden Time,' Vol. i., frontispiece, and pages 21 ff.
For pronunciation, see A. J. Ellis, 'Early English
Pronunciation,' ii., 419 ff. The translation given by Mr.
Ellis is:--
"Summer has come in; loudly sing, cuckoo! Grows seed and
blossoms mead and springs the wood now. Sing, cuckoo! Ewe
bleats after lamb, lows after (its) calf the cow; bullock
leaps, buck verts (seeks the green); merrily sing, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo! Well singest thou, cuckoo; cease thou not
never now. _Burden_.--Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo! Sing,
cuckoo, sing cuckoo, now."--_Lhude_, _wde_ (=_wude_), _awe_,
_calve_, _bucke_, are dissyllabic. Mr. Ellis's translation of
_verteth_ is very doubtful.
The monk, whose passion for music led him to rescue this charming
song, probably regretted the rustic quality of the words, and did
his best to hide the origin of the air; but behind the complicated
music is a tune of the country-side, and if the refrain is here a
burden, to be sung throughout the piece by certain voices while
others sing the words of the song, we have every right to think of
an earlier refrain which almost absorbed the poem and was sung by
a dancing multitude. This is a most important consideration. In all
parts of Europe, songs for the dance still abound in the shape of a
welcome to spring; and a lyrical outburst in praise of the jocund
season often occurs by way of prelude to the narrative ballad: witness
the beautiful opening of 'Robin Hood and the Monk.' The
troubadour of Provence, like the minnesinger of Germany, imitated
these invocations to spring. A charming _balada_ of Provence probably
takes us beyond the troubadour to the domain of actual folk-song.[2]
"At the entrance of the bright season," it runs, "in order to
begin joy and to tease the jealous, the queen will show that she is
fain to love. As far as to the sea, no maid nor youth but must join
the lusty dance which she devises. On the other hand comes the
king to break up the dancing, fearful lest some one will rob him of
his April queen. Little, however, cares she for the graybeard; a gay
young 'bachelor' is there to pleasure her. Whoso might see her as
she dances, swaying her fair body, he could say in sooth that nothing
in all the world peers the joyous queen!" Then, as after each
stanza, for conclusion the wild refrain--like a _procul este,
profani!_--"Away, ye jealous ones, away! Let us dance together,
together let us dance!" The interjectional refrain, "eya," a mere cry
of joy, is common in French and German songs for the dance, and gives
a very echo of the lusty singers. Repetition, refrain, the infectious
pace and merriment of this old song, stamp it as a genuine product of
the people.[3] The brief but emphatic praise of spring with which it
opens is doubtless a survival of those older pagan hymns and songs
which greeted the return of summer and were sung by the community in
chorus to the dance, now as a religious rite, now merely as the
expression of communal rejoicing. What the people once sang in chorus
was repeated by the individual poet. Neidhart the German is famous on
account of his rustic songs for the dance, which often begin with this
lusty welcome to spring: while the dactyls of Walther von der
Vogelweide not only echo the cadence of dancing feet, but so nearly
exclude the reflective and artistic element that the "I" of the singer
counts for little. "Winter," he sings,--
Winter has left us no pleasure at all;
Leafage and heather have fled with the fall,
Bare is the forest and dumb as a thrall;
If the girls by the roadside were tossing the ball,
I could prick up my ears for the singing-birds' call![4]
[2] The first stanza in the original will show the structure
of this true "ballad" in the primitive sense of a dance-song.
There are five of these stanzas, carrying the same rhymes
throughout:--
A l'entrada del temps clar,--eya,--
Per joja recomencar,--eya,--
E per jelos irritar,--eya,--
Vol la regina mostrar
Qu' el' est si amoroza.