Egidius waer bestu bleven

The song was found in the Gruuthuse manuscript, which dates from around 1400 and includes musical notation.

In 1966 Klaas Hanzen Heeroma (1909 - 1972), a Dutch poet and linguist, published a new edition of the songs and poems from the Gruuthuse manuscript which reached a broad audience.

In 2007 the manuscript was bought from its private owner by the Royal Library of the Netherlands (Dutch: Koninklijke Bibliotheek) in The Hague.

Egidius was tentatively identified as Gillis Honin, who is known to have died suddenly on October 8, 1385.

It is about the death of a friend called Egidius, a Latinised version of the Flemish name Gillis.