Jubilate! You’ve unlocked the secret song-hord! 🏆

The exquisite treasure from the song-chest that I’d like to share today is Veni dilectissime (I translate that as: ‘Come Here, Sexy!’ 😎), from an 11th-century songbook, copied in the Rhineland and now in Cambridge University library. This goliardic song caused so much offence in the middle ages that a do-gooder scribe actually splodged it out of the manuscript! 😱

 In this close-up image from the songbook (which you can view in Cambridge University’s Digital Library), you can see that a previous attempt to remove the medieval splodged ink with chemicals sadly failed to restore the words (and probably caused them to fade even more). Thankfully, modern scholarship and UV technology have brought at least some of it back, and experts on Latin poetry have proposed plausible words to fill in the blanks. 

No melody survives, but the words have such a common rhythm that it’s easy enough to patch together bits of existing medieval melodies in order to sing them in a medieval-ish way.

The emojis in this video may not be very historically informed, but I like to think they’re in keeping with the spirit… 😬

A fun arrangement of ‘Come here sexy’

Watch an interview with one of the world’s finest medieval musicians on this song

The first recording of this song text (to my knowledge) was made by Sequentia Ensemble for Medieval Music for their album Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper (you’ll find this gorgeous recording embedded below). I happen to think Sequentia are the greatest medieval music ensemble of our time, so I count myself extremely lucky to have collaborated with them on a few projects. I’m really happy that Benjamin Bagby (Sequentia director, also known for his incredible performances of Beowulf) agreed to let me interview him about the song. As well as a sublimely creative musician and director, Ben is an absolute treasure trove of totally fascinating medieval music knowledge. Here’s the interview, followed by a link to listen to the song on YouTube. Enjoy!