Listen to Medieval Covers of “Creep,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Bad Romance” & More by Hildegard von Blingin’

All ye bul­ly-rooks with your buskin boots 

Best ye go, best ye go

Out­run my bow

All ye bul­ly-rooks with your buskin boots

Best ye go, best ye go, faster than mine arrow

If bard­core is a thing—and trust us, it is right now—Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’ is the bright­est star in its fir­ma­ment.

The unknown vocal­ist, pure of throat, pays heed to the fas­ci­nat­ing 12th-cen­tu­ry abbess and com­pos­er Saint Hilde­gard of Bin­gen by choice of pseu­do­nym, while demon­strat­ing a sim­i­lar flair for poet­ic lan­guage.

Von Blingin’s nim­ble lyri­cal rework­ing of Fos­ter the People’s 2010 mon­ster hit, “Pumped Up Kicks,” makes deft use of fel­low bard­core prac­tion­er Cor­nelius Link’s copy­right-free instru­men­tal score and the clos­est medieval syn­onyms avail­able.

For the record, Webster’s 1913 dic­tio­nary defines a “bul­ly-rook” as a bul­ly, but the term could also be used in a josh­ing, chops-bust­ing sort of way, such as when The Mer­ry Wives of Windsor’s innkeep­er trots it out to greet lov­able repro­bate, Sir John Fal­staff.

And as any fan of Game of Thrones or The Hunger Games can attest, an arrow can prove as lethal as a gun.

Song­writer Mark Fos­ter told Billboard’s Xan­der Zell­ner last Decem­ber that he had been think­ing of retir­ing “Pumped Up Kicks,” as lis­ten­ers are now con­vinced it’s a boun­cy-sound­ing take on school shoot­ings, rather than a more gen­er­al­ized attempt to get inside the head of a troubled—and fictional—youngster.

With school out of ses­sion since March, it’s an excel­lent time for von Blin­gin’ to pick up the torch and bear this song back to the past.

Dit­to the tim­ing of von Blingin’s ode to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”:

I want thine ugly, I want thy dis­ease

Take aught from thee shall I if it can be free

No Celtic harp, wood­en recorders, or adjust­ment of pos­ses­sive pro­nouns can dis­guise the jolt those open­ing lyrics assume in the mid­dle of a glob­al pan­dem­ic.

(St. Hilde­gard escaped the medieval period’s best known plague, the Black Death, by virtue of hav­ing been born some 250 years before it struck.)

Von Blingin’s lat­est release is an extreme­ly faith­ful take on Radiohead’s “Creep”, with just a few minor tweaks to pull it into medieval lyri­cal align­ment:

Thou float’st like a feath­er

In a beau­ti­ful world

The com­ments sec­tion sug­gest that the peas­ants are eager to get in on the act.

Some are express­ing their enthu­si­asm in approx­i­mate olde Eng­lish…

Oth­ers ques­tion why smygel, eldrich, wyr­den or wastrel were not pressed into ser­vice as replace­ments for creep and weirdo..

To bor­row a phrase from one such jester, best get your requests in “before the tik­toks come for it.”

Lis­ten to Hilde­gard Von Blin­gin’ on Sound Cloud and check out the bard­core sub-red­dit for more exam­ples of the form.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Expe­ri­ence the Mys­ti­cal Music of Hilde­gard Von Bin­gen: The First Known Com­pos­er in His­to­ry (1098 – 1179)

Man­u­script Reveals How Medieval Nun, Joan of Leeds, Faked Her Own Death to Escape the Con­vent

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Help con­tain the plague spread with her series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic set­tings. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.