Musical Interlude topic for November 2025

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On Thursday, March 17 at 8pm in Belfast's Waterfront Hall the Ulster Orchestra accompanied Horslips as they performed some of their best known songs, arranged and conducted by Brian Byrne.
Horslips & Ulster Orchestra - Dusk / Sword of Light | 6:10
Daragh Owens | 1.3K subscribers | 15,346 views | April 7, 2011
(normally I don't much care for these orchestral collabs, but dang)

That’s interesting! I’ve never heard anything like that before.

other versions by Jimi
Jimi Hendrix - Dear Mr Fantasy (rare live) | 4:58
Classic Rock MIA | 1.48K subscribers | 165,925 views | October 4, 2020

😊 Odd how the mind works, someone mentioned the Orkneys in the Lindesfarne topic from yesterday, and someone also mentioned the *band* Lindesfarne, linked a tune of theirs, and a different Horslips tune was in the suggested vids on YouTube. For some reason I got thinking about “Sword of Light”, found this version, and wound up singing along to it. I’ve not listened to it in years, and didn’t know the lyrics were still down in the lumber pile of my mind. 🎵

Wow, this was a suggested vid in one of the Hendrix vids — that instrument appears to be a kalimba. YouTube shorts don’t show much information.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4ysIVWTbt3A

The number of the short works as a regular YT vid link, just no loop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ysIVWTbt3A

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You are a great treasure my FRiend

Never heard of Sandy Denny. Interesting use, back and forth from major to minor to major chords. I will explore them and your other links more.

Thx

My pleasure.

She’s the female voice in that duet with Robert Plant in “Battle of Evermore”.

She’s primarily known for her work with Fairport Convention and before that the Strawbs. I recall reading that she was misled into thinking she was getting signed to Steeleye Span when the Strawbs hired her.

She’s been dead a long time now. I think she fell off a ladder, but she also had alcoholism.

I posted a couple others in last month’s Musical Interlude.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4343612/posts?page=8#8

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4343612/posts?page=14#14

One last comment, then I’ll shaddup. Of the female vocalists of the 60s, I don’t think I can choose between Sandy Denny and Julie Driscoll.

Spanish Fly (2015 Remaster) | 1:01
Van Halen | 914K subscribers | 1,167,384 views | April 4, 2015

Yogi Berra's 1947 rookie jersey found at Boys & Girls Club in NYC expected to fetch $1M in auction [11/01/2025]
Venomous snake rescued from backyard swimming pool [11/01/2025]

Long before Shakespeare, there was Sumer Is Icumen In -- the oldest surviving song in the English language with music and lyrics both intact. But beneath its melody lies something more surprising: a hidden medieval joke that later generations tried to censor.

This video unpacks the song’s origins, lyrics, and the strange sense of humour that connects us to people from the England of 800 years ago.
The oldest surviving song in English is not what I expected | 12:30
James Hargreaves Guitar | 113K subscribers | 54,632 views | October 29, 2025

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:00 · The oldest surviving complete song in the English language embarrassed the establishment and was
0:07 · censored by the Victorians. Today I want to share that song with you and explain why. Now I'm not
0:14 · talking about just the oldest set of plain lyrics. That's a song called Caedmon's Hymn from around
0:20 · the year 500 to which you can see the lyrics on screen now. Today we're looking at the oldest song
0:27 · with lyrics and music still intact. And that song dates to 700 years after Caedmon's Hymn,
0:35 · to the 1200s. And you can read all about it on a plaque in the ruins of Reading Abbey,
0:40 · which says, "This canon, which has been described as the most remarkable
0:44 · ancient music composition in existence, was written down at Reading Abbey, circa 1240."
0:51 · As I was researching and kind of digging through the history books,
0:55 · I found out that this actually isn't a religious song. It's a secular song. And so I was expecting
1:02 · the swirling mists of ancient legend, Arthur, Merlin, knights and dragons, misty forests
1:08 · crackling with magic, druids, Stonehenge, kings, thieves, and the lost isle of Avalon.
1:14 · Of course, what I actually found was a goofy West
1:18 · Country farmyard song about farting goats. I kid you not.
1:24 · Anyone who has watched The Wicker Man has actually already heard a very heavily adapted and altered
1:30 · version of this song, as the islanders all sing it in the big finale at the end of the film. The song
1:35 · is called Sumer Is Icumen In, and it was written in the West Country dialect of Middle English.
1:43 · And for those who don't know, the West Country is the bit of England in the bottom left where
1:47 · everyone sounds like a pirate (to overgeneralise just a little). And so we're going to start
1:53 · with the original version of this song which existed back then. And then we'll explain it.
2:22 · Now, from that lot, you probably only managed to grab the odd word that made any sense. The
2:27 · most recognisable one being the child's bird noise, "cuckoo". And that's because Middle
2:32 · English at this point was on its way to bearing some resemblance to today's English. Whereas if
2:38 · you go back 700 years and look at Caedmon's Hymn in old English, the only recognizable words really
2:44 · are the words 'now' right at the beginning, and 'Midgard' or 'Middle Earth' towards the
2:50 · end. Everything else is just too far removed from English today. But thankfully not so in this song.
2:57 · So now that you've heard the medieval version, let's go through it line by line. Let's translate
3:02 · it word by word so you can start putting together what it all means. And I should just point out
3:08 · that I am not a linguistics expert. So if I have got any of the pronunciations slightly off,
3:15 · my apologies. We start with sumer is icumen in. And that's a very easy and straightforward one.
3:22 · Summer is a-coming in. Back then, however, the seasons weren't actually split into four the way
3:28 · we do today. They were split into two, just winter and summer. What we call autumn and winter today,
3:36 · they just called winter. And what we call spring and summer today, they just call summer. And this
3:42 · song is talking about old summer. So what that actually means is the arrival of spring in April.
3:50 · The next line says, "Lhude sing cuccu," and this is the first of many lines in the song talking
3:56 · about the animals in the English countryside. Word by word, it translates to loudly sing
4:02 · cuckoo. And I did check, and thankfully it's not inviting the listener to start hooting
4:08 · like a bird. It's inviting the bird to start singing because it heralds the start of spring.
4:15 · The next line is "Groweth sed and bloweth med," and this line translates directly to groweth seed
4:22 · and bloweth 'med' which means meadow. So the seeds are growing and the meadow is... blowing? Yes,
4:31 · but blowing in this context doesn't refer to the wind blowing. It actually means blooming
4:37 · and blossoming. So it's seed groweth and the meadow bloometh. On we go.
4:43 · "And springeth the woode nu, sing cuccu." Similarly to the first line,
4:49 · this is a pretty easy translation as well. Spring has come to the woods now. Springeth
4:54 · the wood means the wood is sprouting. Leaves are growing and the woodland is coming back
4:59 · to life. Sing cuckoo bird. Not too much to unpack there. So now let's move on to the farm animals.
5:07 · "Awe bleteth after lomb." When you see 'Awe bleatetth after lomb' written down
5:12 · rather than spoken, it actually becomes a little clearer what it means word-for-word. 'Awe' is
5:18 · ewe spelled e-w-e ,meaning a female sheep. Bleateth just means bleating,
5:24 · the noise a sheep makes, and lomb just means lamb. So literally, the ewe bleats after her lamb.
5:32 · The next line is similar. "Lhoth after calve, cu." For much of the English language's history,
5:38 · cows didn't moo, they 'lowed'. You know that verse from the Christmas song, Away in a manger:
5:45 · 'The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes'? That's probably the best known modern example of cows
5:51 · lowing instead of mooing. So here, lhoth after calve cu translates directly to loweth after calf,
6:00 · cow. Today we would rearrange that sentence to say the cow moos after her calf. It's
6:07 · literally just the cow version of the sheep line we had just before.
6:12 · New calves and lambs are running around the fields with their mothers calling after them.
6:17 · But now at last we come to the goofiest line of the song and the one that embarrassed the
6:21 · Victorians so much. "Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth". Now the first part of
6:27 · this line is almost a straight translation. The bullock starteth. To 'start' in this
6:34 · context doesn't mean to begin something, it actually means to leap or to jump. It's
6:40 · where the word startled comes from. So bulluc sterteth means the bullock leaps.
6:47 · And the next part, bucke verteth, translates directly to 'the buck farts'. Now back then,
6:55 · 'buck' could have meant either a male deer or a male goat,
6:59 · it depends on the context. But here in this song we're just going through a list of farm animals,
7:04 · so the general academic consensus is that this means goat. The goat farteth.
7:12 · This line, however, has been repeatedly sanitised down through history. I actually have some older
7:18 · family members who remember singing this song when they were children at school,
7:22 · and this line was always replaced with 'the buck departeth'. Even in the Wicker Man, this line
7:28 · was changed to bullock stamps and deer champs. Perhaps they felt a line about flatulent goats
7:36 · might have somewhat undermined the atmosphere in the big final climactic scene of a horror movie.
7:42 · In 1938, this was written in an English language journal about the widespread embarrassment felt by
7:49 · the establishment that the oldest surviving English song talked about farting goats.
8:33 · And so we come to the final line of the song which goes "Murie sing cuccu cuccu cuccu,
8:40 · Wel singes thu cuccu, ne swik thu naver nu." And this last little section means
8:46 · merrily sing cuckoo, cuckoo cuckoo, well sings thou cuckoo, never cease now. And that's it.
8:53 · If we finally string it all together in today's modern English,
8:58 · this is what the oldest surviving English song is actually saying.
9:22 · And so there you have it, the 800-year-old medieval English folk song that got censored
9:28 · by the Victorians because it talked about farting goats. Now the song itself
9:33 · is actually pretty interesting. It's a round, so when one person starts singing the melody,
9:38 · another one joins a few bars after singing exactly the same melody,
9:43 · but just a little bit behind him. This happens again and again until there are
9:47 · four people all singing that same round. And underneath that, there are also two bass parts
9:53 · which are kind of a mini-round. So by the time you get into the thick of the song,
9:58 · there are six voices all ringing over the top of each other. You get these rolling waves of lyrics
10:04 · and notes that all work together and create this heavily textured kind of hypnotic chant.
10:10 · If I'm being honest, I really wanted to hate this song because it's so daft and corny,
10:16 · but the truth is I don't. The original title of this video was going to be 'The Oldest Song In
10:21 · The English Language Is Embarrassingly Bad', but I've had to change it because, I can't help it,
10:27 · it's kind of grown on me! It's in 6/8 time, which gives it that fun thigh-slapping kind of pirate
10:34 · jig vibe. A sort of fun medieval dance rhythm. And because this song was written over 800 years ago,
10:41 · it's been in the public domain for some time. So, now I'm going to play you a recording,
10:46 · and I'll put the original and the translation on the screen as it runs. Here we go.
12:07 · And that's it. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Thank you
12:11 · so much for watching, and as always, I'll see you next time. And as always,
12:15 · a massive thank you to all my supporters on Patreon. And if you would like to be credited
12:20 · at the end of videos and to have access to three tiers of Patreon only content,
12:25 · the link is down in the description, and hopefully I'll see you inside.

Jazz icon Herb Alpert is back on stage with a new Tijuana Brass for the first time in 40 years as he celebrates his milestone birthday and the 60th anniversary of his hit album.
CBS Mornings: Herb Alpert celebrates 90 years
and a return to the stage with new Tijuana Brass | 8:36
Herb Alpert | 215K subscribers | 619,643 views | April 25, 2025

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Here is the intro to the series from the late 50's staring Connie Stevens, Robert Conrad, Poncie Ponce, and Anthony Eisley
Hawaiian Eye Intro | 1:07
CoffeeSundayMorning | 1.23K subscribers | 420,666 views | February 3, 2010

Oh wow...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNDOjHCatyQ

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:00	·	The oldest surviving complete song in the English language embarrassed the establishment and was
0:07	·	censored by the Victorians. Today I want to share that song with you and explain why. Now I'm not
0:14	·	talking about just the oldest set of plain lyrics. That's a song called Caedmon's Hymn from around
0:20	·	the year 500 to which you can see the lyrics on screen now. Today we're looking at the oldest song
0:27	·	with lyrics and music still intact. And that song dates to 700 years after Caedmon's Hymn,
0:35	·	to the 1200s. And you can read all about it on a plaque in the ruins of Reading Abbey,
0:40	·	which says, "This canon, which has been described as the most remarkable
0:44	·	ancient music composition in existence, was written down at Reading Abbey, circa 1240."
0:51	·	As I was researching and kind of digging through the history books,
0:55	·	I found out that this actually isn't a religious song. It's a secular song. And so I was expecting
1:02	·	the swirling mists of ancient legend, Arthur, Merlin, knights and dragons, misty forests
1:08	·	crackling with magic, druids, Stonehenge, kings, thieves, and the lost isle of Avalon.
1:14	·	Of course, what I actually found was a goofy West
1:18	·	Country farmyard song about farting goats. I kid you not.
1:24	·	Anyone who has watched The Wicker Man has actually already heard a very heavily adapted and altered
1:30	·	version of this song, as the islanders all sing it in the big finale at the end of the film. The song
1:35	·	is called Sumer Is Icumen In, and it was written in the West Country dialect of Middle English.
1:43	·	And for those who don't know, the West Country is the bit of England in the bottom left where
1:47	·	everyone sounds like a pirate (to overgeneralise just a little). And so we're going to start
1:53	·	with the original version of this song which existed back then. And then we'll explain it.
2:22	·	Now, from that lot, you probably only managed to grab the odd word that made any sense. The
2:27	·	most recognisable one being the child's bird noise, "cuckoo". And that's because Middle
2:32	·	English at this point was on its way to bearing some resemblance to today's English. Whereas if
2:38	·	you go back 700 years and look at Caedmon's Hymn in old English, the only recognizable words really
2:44	·	are the words 'now' right at the beginning, and 'Midgard' or 'Middle Earth' towards the
2:50	·	end. Everything else is just too far removed from English today. But thankfully not so in this song.
2:57	·	So now that you've heard the medieval version, let's go through it line by line. Let's translate
3:02	·	it word by word so you can start putting together what it all means. And I should just point out
3:08	·	that I am not a linguistics expert. So if I have got any of the pronunciations slightly off,
3:15	·	my apologies. We start with sumer is icumen in. And that's a very easy and straightforward one.
3:22	·	Summer is a-coming in. Back then, however, the seasons weren't actually split into four the way
3:28	·	we do today. They were split into two, just winter and summer. What we call autumn and winter today,
3:36	·	they just called winter. And what we call spring and summer today, they just call summer. And this
3:42	·	song is talking about old summer. So what that actually means is the arrival of spring in April.
3:50	·	The next line says, "Lhude sing cuccu," and this is the first of many lines in the song talking
3:56	·	about the animals in the English countryside. Word by word, it translates to loudly sing
4:02	·	cuckoo. And I did check, and thankfully it's not inviting the listener to start hooting
4:08	·	like a bird. It's inviting the bird to start singing because it heralds the start of spring.
4:15	·	The next line is "Groweth sed and bloweth med," and this line translates directly to groweth seed
4:22	·	and bloweth 'med' which means meadow. So the seeds are growing and the meadow is... blowing? Yes,
4:31	·	but blowing in this context doesn't refer to the wind blowing. It actually means blooming
4:37	·	and blossoming. So it's seed groweth and the meadow bloometh. On we go.
4:43	·	"And springeth the woode nu, sing cuccu." Similarly to the first line,
4:49	·	this is a pretty easy translation as well. Spring has come to the woods now. Springeth
4:54	·	the wood means the wood is sprouting. Leaves are growing and the woodland is coming back
4:59	·	to life. Sing cuckoo bird. Not too much to unpack there. So now let's move on to the farm animals.
5:07	·	"Awe bleteth after lomb." When you see 'Awe bleatetth after lomb' written down
5:12	·	rather than spoken, it actually becomes a little clearer what it means word-for-word. 'Awe' is
5:18	·	ewe spelled e-w-e ,meaning a female sheep. Bleateth just means bleating,
5:24	·	the noise a sheep makes, and lomb just means lamb. So literally, the ewe bleats after her lamb.
5:32	·	The next line is similar. "Lhoth after calve, cu." For much of the English language's history,
5:38	·	cows didn't moo, they 'lowed'. You know that verse from the Christmas song, Away in a manger:
5:45	·	'The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes'? That's probably the best known modern example of cows
5:51	·	lowing instead of mooing. So here, lhoth after calve cu translates directly to loweth after calf,
6:00	·	cow. Today we would rearrange that sentence to say the cow moos after her calf. It's
6:07	·	literally just the cow version of the sheep line we had just before.
6:12	·	New calves and lambs are running around the fields with their mothers calling after them.
6:17	·	But now at last we come to the goofiest line of the song and the one that embarrassed the
6:21	·	Victorians so much. "Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth". Now the first part of
6:27	·	this line is almost a straight translation. The bullock starteth. To 'start' in this
6:34	·	context doesn't mean to begin something, it actually means to leap or to jump. It's
6:40	·	where the word startled comes from. So bulluc sterteth means the bullock leaps.
6:47	·	And the next part, bucke verteth, translates directly to 'the buck farts'. Now back then,
6:55	·	'buck' could have meant either a male deer or a male goat,
6:59	·	it depends on the context. But here in this song we're just going through a list of farm animals,
7:04	·	so the general academic consensus is that this means goat. The goat farteth.
7:12	·	This line, however, has been repeatedly sanitised down through history. I actually have some older
7:18	·	family members who remember singing this song when they were children at school,
7:22	·	and this line was always replaced with 'the buck departeth'. Even in the Wicker Man, this line
7:28	·	was changed to bullock stamps and deer champs. Perhaps they felt a line about flatulent goats
7:36	·	might have somewhat undermined the atmosphere in the big final climactic scene of a horror movie.
7:42	·	In 1938, this was written in an English language journal about the widespread embarrassment felt by
7:49	·	the establishment that the oldest surviving English song talked about farting goats.
8:33	·	And so we come to the final line of the song which goes "Murie sing cuccu cuccu cuccu,
8:40	·	Wel singes thu cuccu, ne swik thu naver nu." And this last little section means
8:46	·	merrily sing cuckoo, cuckoo cuckoo, well sings thou cuckoo, never cease now. And that's it.
8:53	·	If we finally string it all together in today's modern English,
8:58	·	this is what the oldest surviving English song is actually saying.
9:22	·	And so there you have it, the 800-year-old medieval English folk song that got censored
9:28	·	by the Victorians because it talked about farting goats. Now the song itself
9:33	·	is actually pretty interesting. It's a round, so when one person starts singing the melody,
9:38	·	another one joins a few bars after singing exactly the same melody,
9:43	·	but just a little bit behind him. This happens again and again until there are
9:47	·	four people all singing that same round. And underneath that, there are also two bass parts
9:53	·	which are kind of a mini-round. So by the time you get into the thick of the song,
9:58	·	there are six voices all ringing over the top of each other. You get these rolling waves of lyrics
10:04	·	and notes that all work together and create this heavily textured kind of hypnotic chant.
10:10	·	If I'm being honest, I really wanted to hate this song because it's so daft and corny,
10:16	·	but the truth is I don't. The original title of this video was going to be 'The Oldest Song In
10:21	·	The English Language Is Embarrassingly Bad', but I've had to change it because, I can't help it,
10:27	·	it's kind of grown on me! It's in 6/8 time, which gives it that fun thigh-slapping kind of pirate
10:34	·	jig vibe. A sort of fun medieval dance rhythm. And because this song was written over 800 years ago,
10:41	·	it's been in the public domain for some time. So, now I'm going to play you a recording,
10:46	·	and I'll put the original and the translation on the screen as it runs. Here we go.
12:07	·	And that's it. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Thank you
12:11	·	so much for watching, and as always, I'll see you next time. And as always,
12:15	·	a massive thank you to all my supporters on Patreon. And if you would like to be credited
12:20	·	at the end of videos and to have access to three tiers of Patreon only content,
12:25	·	the link is down in the description, and hopefully I'll see you inside.