Westron Wynde
Westron Wynde is an early 16th-century song whose tune was used as the basis (cantus firmus) of Masses by English composers John Taverner, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard. The tune first appears with words in a partbook of around 1530, which contains mainly keyboard music. Historians believe that the lyrics are a few hundred years older ('Middle English') and the words are a fragment of medieval poetry.
The lyrics of the original were decidedly secular:
Recovering the original tune of Westron Wynde that was used in these Masses is not entirely straightforward. There is a version that uses the secular words, but with rather different notes:
The version used by the three Mass composers can only be inferred by what they put into their Masses. In program notes (see below), Peter Phillips offers the following reconstruction:
But this is not always exactly what appears in the Masses; thus the New Grove quotes the following sequence from Taverner's Mass:
...
Wikipedia