Mirie it is while sumer ilast

“Mirie it is while sumer ilast” (“Merry it is while summer ylast”) is a Middle English song from the first half of the 13th century.

It is one of the oldest songs in the English language, and one of the few examples of non-liturgical music from medieval England.

[2] The text and melody are incomplete on a single, damaged manuscript page, which, together with the somewhat ambiguous notation, makes it difficult to reconstruct the song in whole.

It is unclear whether the song originally contained additional lines or stanzas, which Harrison considers probable,[3] nor can the final word be conclusively determined.

Botolph's bones were kept as a relic in Thorney, while Æthelthryth was considered the patron saint of the Isle of Ely.

The book and the bound manuscript came into the holdings of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 1755 through the collection of the antiquarian Richard Rawlinson.

Based on linguistic features, the manuscript with Mirie it is dated to the first half of the 13th century and is located in the dialect area of the Midlands.