Harley MS 978
- Library
- British Library, London (United Kingdom)source
- Shelfmark
- Harley MS 978
- Date
- “3rd quarter of the 13th century” (British Library catalogue)
Indexed as 1250–1274 - Notation
- Mensural
the earliest known copy of the composition, a manuscript written in mensural notation
Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Mensural
- Note
- The British Library catalogue states that digital images are currently unavailable.
"Sumer is icumen in" is the incipit of a medieval English round or rota of the mid-13th century; it is also known variously as the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song. The line translates approximately to "Summer has come" or "Summer has arrived". The song is written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer's identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe or a monk at Reading Abbey, John of Fornsete. The manuscript in which it is preserved was copied between 1261 and 1264.
Contents
No contents list has been added for this manuscript yet. Contents are only shown where an open, citable record lists them.
Editions on this site
- Sumer is icumen in, f. 11v
Images and rights
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British Library, via Wikimedia Commons
- Required statement
- London, British Library, Harley MS 978, f. 11v. Image: British Library, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Scope
- f. 11v only
- On this site
- A CC0 1.0 copy of this image is served by this site; it is not loaded from the library’s server.
- Rights
- CC0 1.0
- Reuse
- Openly licensed.
- For IIIF viewers
- IIIF manifest motetus.org
- Copied from
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Elsewhere
Cite this page
Motetus, “London, British Library, Harley MS 978”, https://motetus.org/manuscripts/london-harley-978/.