"The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" is J. R. R. Tolkien's imagined original song behind the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle ", invented by back-formation. It was first published in Yorkshire Poetry magazine in 1923, and was reused in extended form in the 1954–55 The Lord of the Rings as a song sung by Frodo Baggins in the Prancing Pony inn. The extended version was republished in the 1962 collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
"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.
Westron Wynde is an early 16th-century song whose tune was used as the basis of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, catalogued by the British Library as Royal Appendix MS 58. Historians believe that the lyrics are a few hundred years older and the words are a fragment of medieval poetry.
Builder's Old Measurement is the method used in England from approximately 1650 to 1849 for calculating the cargo capacity of a ship. It is a volumetric measurement of cubic capacity. It estimated the tonnage of a ship based on length and maximum beam. It is expressed in "tons burden", and abbreviated "tons bm".
South English legendaries are compilations of versified saints' lives written in southern dialects of Middle English from the late 13th to 15th centuries. At least fifty of these manuscripts survive, preserving nearly three hundred hagiographic works.
The Cantata by Igor Stravinsky is a work for soprano, tenor, female choir, and instrumental ensemble, and was composed from April 1951 to August 1952. The premiere performance on 11 November 1952 was by the Los Angeles (Chamber) Symphony Society, conducted by Stravinsky himself. After completing the opera The Rake's Progress, Stravinsky felt the urge to compose another work setting English words, but in a non-dramatic form.
John Audelay was an English priest and poet from Haughmond Abbey, in Shropshire; one of the few English poets of the period whose name is known to us. Some of the first Christmas carols recorded in English appear among his works.
The Harleian Library, Harley Collection, Harleian Collection and other variants is one of the main "closed" collections of the British Library in London, formerly the library of the British Museum.
Psalm 133 is the 133rd psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity". In Latin, it is known as "Ecce quam bonum". The psalm is one of the fifteen Songs of Ascents, and one of the three Songs of Ascents consisting of only three verses.
The Kildare Poems or Kildare Lyrics are a group of sixteen poems written in an Irish dialect of Middle English and dated to the mid-14th century. Together with a second, shorter set of poems in the so-called Loscombe Manuscript, they constitute the first and most important linguistic document of the early development of Irish English in the centuries after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. The sixteen poems contain both religious and satirical contents. They are preserved in a single manuscript, where they are scattered between a number of Latin and Old French texts. The conventional modern designation "Kildare poems" refers both to the town of Kildare in Ireland, which has been proposed as their likely place of origin, and to the name of the author of at least one of the poems, who calls himself "Michael (of) Kildare". The poems have been edited by W. Heuser (1904) and A. Lucas (1995).
The Harley Lyrics is the usual name for a collection of lyrics in Middle English, Anglo Norman, and Latin found in Harley MS 2253, a manuscript dated ca. 1340 in the British Library's Harleian Collection. The lyrics contain "both religious and secular material, in prose and verse and in a wide variety of genres." The manuscript is written in three recognisable hands: scribe A, scribe B or the Ludlow scribe, and scribe C.
The Proverbs of Hendyng is a poem from around the second half of the thirteenth century in which one Hendyng, son of Marcolf, utters a series of proverbial stanzas. It stands in a tradition of Middle-English proverbial poetry also attested by The Proverbs of Alfred; the two texts include some proverbs in common. The rhyme scheme is AABCCB.
John James Frey was born Johann Jacob Frey in Basel on 6 June 1606 as the son of a notable Basel family. He studied at the University of Basel, where he graduated MA in 1625. He then went to study in Geneva, Lyons and Oxford. From January 1629 he was tutor to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, the oldest son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, possibly recommended by Sir Henry Wotton. Frey was incorporated MA of Oxford as a member of Christ Church on 4 July 1629, and ordained as Anglican Deacon at Westminster in May 1630. He was in Basel as pastor at St. Margrethen for a few months and briefly matriculated for theology in Leyden. In 1632-1633, Frey toured France with young Richard Boyle, then stayed in London and Lismore, doing research for Archbishop James Ussher.
In the summer of 1635, after Dungarvan’s marriage, Frey returned to Switzerland, bringing back a library of about 130 English volumes which are held at the University of Basel. They include sermons and theology, but also poetry, plays, Walter Raleigh's History of the world, and a Second Folio of Shakespeare’s works. The books formed one of the foundations for the Frey-Grynaeum library in Basel, a building and collection established by the theology professor Johann Ludwig Frey, a great-grandson (1682-1759). About 30 volumes carry Frey's signature and some notes. These volumes include a Bible in Hebrew and Greek but also some quite surprising items for a Protestant minister: Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations in a critical English edition, the early Latin epigrams of Richard Crashaw, John Selden's Marmora Arundelliana and Plato’s Menexenos with several pages of notes.
Frey had returned to Basel to take up a position as Professor of Greek at the University of Basel, where he was much respected but felt “bound to Basel against my will”. He was longing to return to Britain but turned down a pressing offer to tutor the young semi-orphaned sons of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. Instead, he agreed to become dean of Armagh in Ireland. on 15 November 1635, planning to move to Ireland in the spring of 1637. On 28 August 16163, the day that the Basel authorities decided to grant him leave to take up his post in Ireland, Frey died of a "fever" on 28 August 1636, just 30 years old.
Frey was intensely mourned by Swiss and English friends as a brilliantly gifted and lovable man. In 1653, James Ussher fondly remembered the intellectual exchanges he enjoyed when “our Frey” was among the living. Frey’s correspondence shows that his linguistic skills included - beyond the usual theologian’s tools of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and possibly Arabic – fluent and idiomatic French, Italian and English. Ordained at age 23, he must have spoken English well enough to preach even then, and he corresponded in English with scholars such as Ussher and John Gregory as well as with aristocratic lords and ladies such as Frances Clifford and her daughter Elizabeth Boyle.
Thorlac Francis Samuel Turville-Petre is an English philologist who is Professor Emeritus and former head of the School of English at the University of Nottingham. He specializes in the study of Middle English literature.
"Alysoun" or "Alison", also known as "Bytuene Mersh ant Averil", is a late-13th or early-14th century poem in Middle English dealing with the themes of love and springtime through images familiar from other medieval poems. It forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics, and exemplifies its best qualities. There may once have been music for this poem, but if so it no longer survives. "Alysoun" was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and The Longman Anthology of British Literature. It has been called one of the best lyrics in the language.
"The knight who could make cunts speak" is a French fabliau. Seven versions of it remain, including one in MS Harley 2253.
"Lenten ys come with love to toune", also known as "Spring", is an anonymous late-13th or early-14th century Middle English lyric poem which describes the burgeoning of nature as spring arrives, and contrasts it with the sexual frustration of the poet. It forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics. Possibly the most famous of the Middle English lyrics, it has been called one of the best lyrics in the language, and "a lover's description of spring, richer and more fragrant in detail than any other of its period." No original music for this poem survives, but it has been set to music by Benjamin Britten, Alan Rawsthorne and others. It was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse.
Thomas Honegger is a scholar of literature, known especially for his studies of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.
"A wayle whyt ase whalles bon", also titled after the opening of its refrain "Ich wolde ich were a threstelcok", is an anonymous late-13th or early-14th century Middle English lyric poem. The text forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics.
"Most I ryden by Rybbesdale", also titled "The Fair Maid of Ribblesdale", is an anonymous late-13th or early-14th century Middle English lyric poem. The text forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics.
Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918/Blow, Northern Wind at Wikisource 