‘Lenten ys come with love to toune’ (c. 1400)
This anonymous lyric describes the coming of spring: the birds singing, flowers blooming, randy (male) poets complaining that they’re not getting any action. Wikipedia thinks it ‘possibly the most famous of the Middle English lyrics’ and ‘one of the best lyrics in the language.’ I’ve had a go at sliding it into modern English in a way that maintains as much of the rhyme and alliteration as possible.
Lenten ys come with loue to toune,
With blosmen ant with briddes roune,
That al this blisse bryngeth.
Dayeseyes in this dales,
Notes suete of nyhtegales,
Vch foul song singeth.
The threstelcoc him threteth oo;
Away is huere wynter wo
When woderoue springeth.This foules singeth ferly fele
Ant wlyteth on wynne wele
That al the wode ryngeth.
The rose rayleth hire rode;
The leues on the lyhte wode
Waxen al with wille.
The mone mandeth hire bleo;
The lilie is lossom to seo,
The fenyle ant the fille.Wowes this wilde drakes,
Miles murgeth huere makes
Ase strem that striketh stille.
Mody meneth, so doth mo;
Ichot Ycham on of tho
For loue that likes ille.
The mone mandeth hire lyht,
So doth the semly sonne bryht,
When briddes singeth breme.Deawes donketh the dounes;
Deores with huere derne rounes,
Domes forte deme.
Wormes woweth vnder cloude;
Wymmen waxeth wounder proude,
So wel hit wol hem seme.
Yef me shal wonte wille of on,
This wunne weole Y wole forgon,
Ant wyht in wode be fleme.
Spring has come with love to town
With blossom and with birds around,
That bring all blisses on.
Daisies blooming in these dales,
Sweetest notes from nightingales,
Each fowl flutes along.
The throstlecock is singing so
Away with all your winter woe
Sweet the woodruffs throng.
These fowl are singing fine and full
And wonderful they wing as well
And fill the wood with song.
The rose enrobes herself in red
The leaves throughout the light-green wood
Are growing all with will.
The shining moon directs her gleam
The lily is lovely to be seen,
The wild-thyme and fennel.
Wild with wooing are these drakes,
Animals cajole their mates
Like streams that slide-by still.
Moody men do so complain —
I know full well I’m one of them! —
For love that’s unfulfilled.
The shining moon directs her light
So does the seemly sun shine bright
Whilst birds are singing free.
Dews endrench the hilly downs;
Deer go on their secret rounds,
Judging all they see.
Worms make love under the clod,
Women are grown wondrous proud:
It suits them so to be.
If I can’t work my will on one
In this fine world I’ll soon be gone,
And live among the trees.
There are plenty of other translations (here and here for instance) though none, I think, that quite do what I do with mine. The ‘throstlecock’ in stanza one is the thrush. Scholars suggest the ‘deores’ of stanza four are actually small animals; but deor means deer as well as small animal, and I prefer the idea of secretive deer, going about their secret business in the wood. What are they up to! They won’t say.
The worms are making love under the clod — under the earth, under the soil — but the Middle English word cloude also means cloud, and I like the idea of worms coming up and getting some hot wormy lovin’ under the open sky. Etymologically speaking clod and cloud are the same word, since both derive from from Old English clūd (“mass of stone, rock, boulder, hill”), from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz, (“lump, mass, conglomeration”). Clouds are big clods in the sky, and, I suppose, clods are small clouds of soil.
As for the title, which is to say the first line: ‘Lent’ now means that portion of the ecclesiastical year that precedes Easter, when believers are supposed to abstain from certain foods and pleasures. But Easter is a spring festival, and ‘lent’ originally meant, just, springtime. This is the period of the year when the days lengthen, and lengthen is what lent actually means.
