XPost: uk.music.folk   
   From: Jas.HoggOUT@SPAM.gmail.com   
      
   On Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:22:12 +0100, David Kilpatrick   
    wrote:   
      
      
   >It's very hard to find anything resembling a secular song before 1500   
   >even in the collections of the Bodleian, Roxburghe Club, etc - which I   
   >guess is why 'Sumer is a Cumin In' is about the only one ever quoted.   
      
   Could I just be pedantic and point out that the song goes 'Sumer   
   is i-cumen in'. It doesn't mean 'a-coming' but is in fact the   
   Middle English equivalent of the German perfect tense   
   'ist gekommen'. In other words, 'summer is come in' or   
   as we would now say, 'summer has come in'.   
      
   The Old English 'ge-' prefix survived as an unstressed vowel in   
   words like 'yclept' and even persists in some modern English   
   words like 'alike' (German gleich) and 'enough' (German genug).   
      
   James   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)