The three of them falter as they forge forth: With wailings of winds, the weather turns wan, And a rime-grey mist arises from earth – All of their men have turned tail and gone. “Our daring adventures may yet end in dearth, And though we seek honour, I fear we breed wrong – We are three wealthy kings with kindred of worth, Yet caught up in care: we’ll reap wrath ere long, For our fates have been cast And we must count the cost And hope that this mist By morning has passed Or our three lives are lost.”

They creep a foot forward, then flee back a few, Onto a field where the fug seems to glow, And out of the grove, three men come in view: Shadowy phantoms, fated to show, With legs long and lean, and limbs all askew, Their livers and lights all foetid. With slow, Ungainly gaits they approach, and slew Each horse into frenzy. They bridle, they blow, They pant, stride and bite As the ghosts groan, “Pay heed!” And no succour in sight. Each king carps at Christ With crossings and Creeds.

Fifteenth century Middle English alliterative poem ‘De Tribus Regibus Mortuis’, attributed to John Audelay, translated by Giles Watson. There are strong similarities between this ghost-narrative and that described in the slightly earlier Anturs of Arther: in both cases, the manifestation takes place during a hunt (a common mediaeval symbol of the worldly excesses of kings), and is preceded by a supernatural fog which separates the main protagonists from the other hunters. Both poems also feature corporeal ghosts who are in an advanced stage of decomposition. Indeed, on the basis of poems such as these, and the depictions of The Three Living and the Three Dead in wall-paintings and manuscript illuminations, Rosemary Horrox has hypothesised “that in western Europe at this time the death of the body was not seen – as Christian teaching required – as something which occurred when the soul left the body. The orthodox version of events dominates the religious iconography of the period, with the moment of death shown by the departure of the soul, represented as a little naked figure, from the mouth of the dying person. But an alternative tradition gives the body a continuing post-mortem life of its own.” (See ‘Purgatory, Prayer and Plague: 1150-1380’, in Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings (Eds.), Death in England: An Illustrated History, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 93-95.) The picture shows a wall-painting depicting The Three Living and the Three Dead, from Widford Church, near Burford, in the Cotswolds. The painting almost certainly pre-dates Audelay's poem.

A reading is available here:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0vM-zln_o" rel="nofollow">www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P0vM-zln_o</a>