Rejoice, music and Hebrew lovers. I translated today my favourite song: Svmer Is Icumen In, attributed to W. de Wycombe. It's a beautiful song, written in Middle English (Wessex dialect), celebrating the Celtic Bealtaine time. It is also the earliest musical canon in the English language, and a marvelous piece of reverdie poetry. It is splendid to find such a pearl, unmarred by men's bloodbath, and yet so fine... I'm very happy I had the priviledge to grow up on it
So, without further ado, here's the translation:
הנה באה עת הקיץ \ וו. דה וייקומב
הנה באה עת הקיץ:
שאי קול, קוקיה!
רוח־אחו שוב כאן שח:
"חורשה שוב הומיה":
קוקיה!
קול כבשה אחרי השה
וקול של געיה.
רון לצבי רוקד סביב
ורון לך, קוקיה!
קו־קו, קו־קו, קול יפה לך, קוקיה:
אל־נא תפסיקי, את.
לווי:
קוקיה, שירי, קוקיה!
קוקיה! קוקיה, שירי!
An Cat Dubh. 7.10.08
And a trans(liter)ation:
Hine ba'a et hakayits, (Here comes summertime,)
S'i kol, kukiya! (Raise your voice, cuckoo!)
Ruakh-akhu shuv kan sakh: (Meadow wind once more tells here:)
"Khursha shuv homiya": ('The woods are busy again':)
Kukiya! (Cuckoo!)
Kol kivsa akhré tale (The voice of a sheep after a lamb)
Vekol shel ge'iya. (And the voice of a bellowing.)
Ron latsvi roked saviv (Felicity to the stag dancing around)
Veron lakh, kukiya! (And felicity to you, cockoo!)
Ku-ku, ku-ku, kol yafe lakh, kukiya: (Cuc-koo, cuc-koo, you have a fine voice, cuckoo:)
Al-na tafsiki, at. (Please do not stop, you.)
Pes:
Kukiya, shiri, kukiya! (Cuckoo, sing, cuckoo!)
Kukiya! Kukiya, shiri! (Cuckoo! Cuckoo, sing!)
It's not the same, but I'm still proud of myself. You've no idea how hard it was to struggle with the internal rhymes and the concise metre...
Tell me what you think of the translation, and tell me if you want to do anything with it.
(EDIT 8.10.08: I listened to Prokofyev's Summer Day today. It was so sweet! Together with other fantastic melodies which escorted me on the road to maturity, this sweet suite resurrected my belief in innocence, to a certain extent.)
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