The Three Dead Kings

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 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".

Once, the three Dead were materialistic and pleasure-loving, saying "Wyle I was mon apon mold merþis þai were myne" ("while I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine"), and they now suffer for it.

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.

[3] Then speaks the last king, he looks in the hills He looks under his hands and holds his head; But a dreadful blow goes cold to his heart Like the knife or the key, that chills the knuckle.

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.