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 15th-century Middle English poem. It is found in the manuscript MS. Douce 302, and its 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.

The theme of the 'Three Living and the Three Dead' is a relatively common form of memento mori in mediaeval art. A Dit des trois morts et des trois vifs by Baudoin de Condé has been traced back to 1280.

In the poem, an unnamed narrator describes seeing a boar hunt, a typical opening of the genre of the chanson d'aventure. 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.

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