‘Sumer is icumen in’

English song in parts, dating from around 1270 and known as the Reading Rota (round). It is a canon for four voices and there are two additional bass voices adding a pes or ground-bass, also in canon. In the manuscript the tune is also provided with Latin words, beginning Perspice, Christicola, but the accompanying voices (or pes) merely have ‘Sing cuccu nu’ in both versions, though the music they sing is actually part of an Easter antiphon (choral music involving the exchange of responses).