Context: “Mirie it is while sumer ilast” (“Merry it is while summer lasts”) is one of the oldest English songs and one of few surviving examples of non-liturgical/secular music. The song, sung in early 13th century Middle English is about the joy of summer before the cold of winter arrives.
The song was re-discovered scribbled onto the back page of a manuscript, alongside two other French songs in the Bodleian Library.
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Odd how it sounds so serious now. I listened to it first and then read the description, and I thought it’d be about a lost love or something, not about the joy of summer. I wonder if they used to play it “with brio” during the summer, and then “ironically” during the winter.
