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The Digital Index of Middle English Verse
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DIMEV 2456
NIMEV 1455.77
In a season of summer that sovereign is of all
Fragment of an alliterative poem describing a bird who shares the writer’s loneliness — 41 lines of surviving fragment
Subjects: birds, as narrators; loneliness


Manuscript Witnesses:
1.Source: London, Corporation of London Records Office [formerly Guildhall] 25125/32, a roll
First Lines:
In a sesone of somere þat souerayne ys of alle
Þat was þe myry monþ of May when many myrthys spryng…
Last Lines:
…For to kepyn in my cage tyl wynter comyn were
Þat sche were wery of þat wedyr and wold abyd somer…
Note: Fourteenth-century rent-roll from St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Editions:
Kennedy, Ruth. “A Bird in Bishopswood: Some Newly-Discovered Lines of Alliterative Verse from the Late Fourteenth Century.” Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle. M. Stokes, and T. L. Burton, eds. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987: 71-87, plus 2 plates between 82 and 83: 83.