Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is a selection of Latin poem and songs, from the first century A.D. through the Middle Ages and up to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Helen Waddell’s translations are presented alongside the Latin. These poems of love and wine, of life and death, were written not to be read, but to be sung; and Waddell succeeds in capturing the rhythmic vitality and youthful flavour of the original. Some of the poems are from the most famous anthology of Medieval Lyric, the Carmina Burana, a compilation of the songs of wandering scholars, or vagantes, who flourished in the later Middle Ages. Helen Jane Waddell (1889 – 1965) was an Irish poet, translator and playwright. She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of a Presbyterian missionary. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her family returned to Belfast.   Published by Penguin in 1952. Good condition. Binding intact. Some foxing.