You are familiar with “Sumer Is Icumen In,” if nowhere else, as the song the murderous villagers sing at the end of the original Wicker Man. It’s one of the oldest known songs in English, and an early example of polyphony. It’s a sweet little example of English pastoralism! Birds, and bleating, and growing bits, and whatnot. Very pagan, very seasonal, no hidden meanings here.

Summer has come in,
Loudly sing, Cuckoo!
The seed grows and the meadow blooms
And the wood springs anew,
Sing, Cuckoo!
The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf.
The bullock stirs, the stag farts,
Merrily sing, Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, well you sing, cuckoo;
Don’t ever you stop now,

Sing cuckoo now. Sing, Cuckoo.
Sing Cuckoo. Sing cuckoo now!

And yet were you aware that it was also subject to one of the most charmingly clunky attempts at Christianization of all time? Friend, it was:

Observe, Christian,
such honour!
The heavenly farmer,
owing to a defect in the vine,
not sparing the Son,
exposed him to the destruction of death.
To the captives half-dead from torment,
He gives them life and crowns them with himself
on the throne of heaven.

MONK #1: “Sorry, how did you get Christ out of farting goats?”

MONK #2: “Don’t worry about it.”