The Three Dead Kings

The Three Dead Kings, also known by its Latin title "De Tribus Regibus Mortuis" or as The Three Living and the Three Dead, is a poem written in 15th century Middle English, found in the manuscript MS. Douce 302, and whose authorship is sometimes attributed to a Shropshire priest, John Audelay. It is an extremely rare survival from a late genre of alliterative verse, also significant as the only English poetic retelling of a well-known "memento mori" current in mediaeval European church art.

Poetic form

Along with other poems in MS. Douce 302, "The Three Dead Kings" is written in a dialect of Middle English local to the area of Shropshire and west Staffordshire.

The poem has an extremely unusual structure, combining a four-stress alliterative line, a tight rhyme scheme, and regular use of assonance. The structure of the rhymes, "abababab" in the first eight lines of each stanza and "cdccd" in the final five, combines with the alliteration to produce an additional pararhyme between pairs of lines:

Hit bene warlaws þre þat walken on þis woldis,
Oure Lord wyss us þe rede way þat al þe world weldus!
My hert fars fore freȝt as flagge when hit foldus,
Vche fyngyr of my hond for ferdchip hit feldus. (83-86)Text in Thorville-Petre, T. (ed.) "Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages: An Anthology", London: Routledge, 1989, pp. 148 – 157.]

(Roughly translated: 'These are three demons that walk on these hills / May our Lord, who rules all the world, show us the quickest way out! / My heart bends with fright like a reed, / Each finger of my hand grows weak with fear')

Theme

The theme of the 'Three Living and the Three Dead' is a relatively common form of "memento mori" in mediaeval art.Ross, L. "Medieval Art: A Topical Dictionary", Greenwood, 1996, p.245]

In the poem, an unnamed narrator describes seeing a boar hunt. Three kings are following the hunt; they lose their way in mist and are separated from their retainers. Suddenly, "schokyn out of a schawe" (42) ('Starting out of a wood') three walking corpses appear, described in graphically hideous terms. The kings are terrified, but show a range of reactions to the three Dead, ranging from a desire to flee to a resolve to face them. The three corpses, in response, state that they are not demons, but the three kings' forefathers, and criticise their heirs for neglecting their memory and not saying masses for their souls: "Bot we haue made ȝoue mastyrs amys/ Þat now nyl not mynn us with a mas" (103-104). Once, the three Dead were materialistic and pleasure-loving: "Wyle I was mon apon mold merþis þai were myne" (121) ('While I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine'), and they now suffer for it. Eventually, the Dead leave, the red daylight comes, and the kings ride home. The final message of the Dead is that the living should always be mindful of them - "Makis your merour be me" (120) - and of the transient nature of life. Afterwards the kings raise a church "with masse" (139) and have the story written on its walls.

Apart from its complex structure, the poem is distinguished for its vividly descriptive and imaginative language.

Authorship

MS. Douce 302, now held at the Bodleian Library, is a manuscript of work by John Audelay, a chantry priest at Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire, who is known to have been alive in 1426, when the manuscript may have been compiled. [http://www.marginalia.co.uk/shared/john_audelay.php John Audelay] , "Marginalia", accessed 03-10-2008] By this point he stated that he was old, deaf, and blind, although this complicates the question of how he could have authored the poetry in the manuscript. Some scholars have argued that Audelay's other poetry lacks the great technical skill shown in "The Three Dead Kings", and that he is therefore unlikely to have written it, especially as it shows signs of a more northerly dialect. Others, however, have defended his authorship, noting that he favours both alliteration and thirteen-line stanza forms elsewhere in the manuscript.Stanley, E. "The Verse Forms of Jon the Blynde Awdelay" in Cooper & Mapstone (eds.) "The Long Fifteenth Century", Oxford: OUP, 1997, p.114]

References