University of South Wales Research Explorer



The ‘Dawns o Bowls’ and the macabre in late medieval Welsh art and poetry[1]

Madeleine Gray

University of South Wales

The excitement over the discovery of medieval wall paintings in the parish church of Llancarfan (Glamorgan) has focused mainly on the massive depiction of St George and the Dragon, which covers much of the south wall.[2] More recently, attention has shifted to the Seven Deadly Sins, which spread from the south to the west wall. Less has been said about the painting of ‘Death and the Gallant’ between the two south windows, possibly because it is to modern eyes such a bizarre and disturbing image. It depicts a cadaver dragging an elegantly-dressed young man towards the westernmost window. The young man wears a fashionably short jacket and tight hose, and what looks like a Monmouth cap, a knitted cap with a rolled brim. These were worn by soldiers, sailors and even labourers, so in spite of his elegant jacket the Llancarfan gallant is not necessarily one of the élite. He is however wearing a sword - and in an intriguing touch the sword is on his right hip, suggesting he may have been left-handed.

The Llancarfan Death is a particularly gruesome one, even by medieval standards. A decomposing corpse, the figure is dressed only in a shroud. A huge worm (clearly not a snake - the segments are very clearly depicted) winds around its body. Rotting entrails can be seen in the abdomen and a huge toad clings to the chest. It is significantly more gruesome than the only other surviving painting of this theme in the United Kingdom. In the parish church of Newark (Norfolk) Death and the Gallant are depicted on two panels of the stone screen of the Markham chantry in what looks almost like a parody of a courtly dance. [3] (The other panels are now blank but Miriam Gill has suggested that they may originally have contained a fuller sequence of the Dance of Death; she is however confident that the Llancarfan example was always intended to stand alone.[4]) Another lost painting depicting one young man and a skeleton, in the Hungerford chapel in Salisbury Cathedral, had a lengthy poem annexed to it.[5] This painting was traditionally identified as part of a Dance of Death but Sophie Oosterwijk has suggested that it was part of a painting of the Three Living and the Three Dead.[6] According to Douce:

In 1748, a print of these figures was published, accompanied with the following inscription, which differs from that in Lydgate. The young man says:

Alasse Dethe alasse a blesful thyng thou were

Yf thou woldyst spare us yn ouwre lustynesse.

And cum to wretches that bethe of hevy chere

Whene thay ye clepe to slake their dystresse

But owte alasse thyne own sely selfwyldnesse

Crewelly werneth me that seygh wayle and wepe

To close there then that after ye doth clepe.

Death answers:

Grosless galante in all thy luste and pryde

Remembyr that thou schalle onys dye

Deth schall fro thy body thy sowle devyde

Thou mayst him not escape certaynly

To the dede bodyes cast down thyne ye

Beholde thayme well consydere and see

For such as thay ar such shalt thou be.

A rather different macabre theme is depicted on the panels of the rood screen at Sparham (Norfolk). On one panel a cadaver in a shroud is kneeling in a tomb and pointing to a font. In the other, two richly dressed cadavers are engaged in what looks like a parody of courtship. Both have scrolls with versified texts from the Book of Job, all of them texts whose Vulgate originals were used in the Office of the Dead. These panels have been described as a Dance of Death but they clearly are not: they are cadavers rather than pairs with cadaver and living victim.[7]

Ian Fell, who runs the interpretation programme at Llancarfan, has suggested that the Llancarfan Death may have been modelled on a memorial brass: these are often more graphic in their depiction of actual cadavers. The closest analogy with the Llancarfan Death figure seems to be a Scandinavian example, the memorial brass to a young woman called Ingeborg, who died in 1429 and was buried in the Franciscan friary in Nyköping.[8] Like the Llancarfan figure, this has toads and worms. The memorial to Ralph Hamsterley (d. c. 1515) in Oddington (Oxon) is if anything even more gruesome but without toads.[9] However, the influence could also have gone the other way. Tombs depicting Death in Malmö (Sweden) are later in date than the Dance of Death murals there.[10] Toads do appear in the Welsh literature of the macabre: in the Ymddiddan yr Enaid a’r Corff (‘The Dialogue of the Soul and the Body’), the Body complains

Yma y mae yn rhaid i mi orwedd

ymysk y llyffeint ar nadredd

(I must lie here among the toads and snakes)[11]

The theme of ‘Death and the Gallant’ is generally regarded as a subset of the ‘Dance of Death’ (as with such other depictions as ‘Death and the Maiden’, ‘Death and the Miser’ and so on).[12] Numerous European examples of the Dance survive in a more or less incomplete state: panel paintings at Tallinn, wall paintings like those at Egtved and Nørre Alslev (Denmark) and Malmö (now in Sweden but formerly Danish), Kermaria-an-Iskuit (Brittany) and Berlin, to give just a few examples.[13] Others, such as the Lübeck and Basle dances, are now known only from copies or drawings, or from transcriptions of the poems which usually accompanied them.[14] Various versions of the Dance were published from the late fifteenth century onwards, perhaps the best known being Guy Marchant’s 1485 series of woodcuts and Holbein’s 1538 version, but there were others. The cult of the Dance remained popular into the early modern period: as well as numerous published versions, the paintings on the Mill Bridge in Lucerne are medieval in style but were painted in the seventeenth century. The Copenhagen publication of 1550 used the woodcuts from the 1489 Lübeck Dodesdanz but with a clearly reformist text.

Unfortunately, though, the sequence which inspired all these has been lost. The earliest securely dated reference to a painting of the Dance is to the charnel house of Les Saints Innocents in Paris, in 1424.[15] There were even earlier poetic versions: the Spanish Dança general de la Muerte of c 1390-1400 was probably modelled on Aragonese or Castilian texts.[16] Oosterwijk has also suggested that earlier German poems, now lost, may have inspired some of the sections of Lydgate’s translation.[17]

The Paris Dance was destroyed in the seventeenth century, probably when the rue de la Ferronnerie was widened in 1669,[18] but by then it had been widely copied. The Benedictine monk and poet John Lydgate, who visited Paris in 1426, translated and adapted the text of the accompanying poem into English verse. A version of his translation then provided the text for murals in the Pardon Churchyard of Old St Pauls in London. [19] The murals were lost when the churchyard was demolished in 1549 but by then they had inspired similar depictions across Britain. There were wall paintings in the Guild Chapel at Stratford-on-Avon, painted cloths and tapestries at Long Melford, Bristol and Salisbury (and possibly among the hangings in the Tower of London), stained glass at Norwich, painted panels at Hexham, misericords in Windsor and Coventry, and the rib vaulting of the Lady Chapel at Rosslyn in Midlothian.[20] In references to the Dance of Death elsewhere in England, though, it was often called the ‘Dance of Pauls’: when Thomas Cooke wanted a brass depicting himself, his wife and a figure of Death in his chantry chapel in Ludlow in 1513, he asked for a figure ‘after the daunce of powles’.[21]

The Dance of Death was in turn part of a bigger picture, the late medieval art of the macabre. Its origins are often said to be in the crisis of the fourteenth century – famine, plague, war and social unrest – but its earlier manifestations predate this. The legend of the Three Living and the Three Dead – three young men on a hunting expedition meet three rotting corpses; the corpses speak and say ‘As you are so once were we; as we are so you will be’ – is first found in the late thirteenth century.[22] Writing in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, Ieuan Brydydd Hir was clearly referring to the legend when he described the ‘tri brenin gwâr / a dduodd yn y ddaear’ (‘the three courtly kings who became black in the earth’).[23] John Aberth traces the art of the macabre back even further, to the Doom tympana on twelfth-century Gothic cathedrals, but the links between this, the Three Living and Three Dead and the Dance of Death are difficult to substantiate.[24] Cadaver or transi tombs are clearly part of the same tradition though their meaning and purpose may be different.

Some key questions need to be posed in order to understand the place of the Llancarfan mural in this wider tradition. As far as the art of the macabre in general is concerned, is the figure Death personified, La Mort, Mors, Angau; or is it a dead person, Le Mort, Y Marw? Even the name of the dance is ambivalent. In German it is der Totentanz, the dance of the dead; in English it is the Dance of Death. (The French neatly sidestep the issue by calling it the Danse Macabre.) And if the figure is a dead person, is it a generic dead person or the cadaver/alter ego/foreshowing of the person being taken away?[25] In the Großbasel Dance of Death it certainly seems to be the latter. The figure leading the Queen into the dance is clearly a female corpse with long ragged hair and empty, sagging breasts. The figure confronting the Cripple is an even clearer mirror image with a shattered leg on a crutch.[26] At Malmö (Sweden) a young and elegantly dressed King is dragged into the dance by a cadaver wearing a crown and mantle.[27] It would be easy to assume that in the case of the transi tomb the cadaver is that of the person commemorated. In the case of episcopal tombs however (the double-decker tomb of Archbishop Henry Chichele in Canterbury Cathedral is perhaps the most striking example), while bishops were traditionally buried in their full vestments, the cadavers are depicted in shrouds.[28] There are no simple answers here.

We also need to consider the direction in which Death is leading the person.[29] At Newark the young man is being invited to the right, arguably to salvation. At Llancarfan the direction is to the young man’s left. The painting extends from the south wall into the window reveal, and the cadaver is actually dragging the young man out of the window and hence out of the church. This may suggest that he is being taken to damnation or simply to the graveyard.

Depictions of Death (and of the dead) vary in their level of aggression. The earlier illustrations of the Three Living and the Three Dead represent the corpses as passive commentators. In later illustrations, though, they are more aggressive. In the Berlin Hours of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian I, the Dead are armed with spears and attacking the fleeing riders.[30] In the Dance of Death, too, Death and the dead are sometimes armed. Frequently they wield spears or darts; sometimes they have pickaxes and spades, the tools of the gravedigger but carried in ways that suggest aggression. Guto’r Glyn’s marwnad to Sir Bened, parson of Corwen, describes Death as ‘clawed’:

Cryf fu angau crafangawg

(Clawed death was strong)[31]

and in his marwnad to Dafydd Llwyd of Abertanad and his wife Catrin, who died of the plague, he speaks of death ‘smiting’ them:

Bwrw Dafydd, bu ar dyfiad,

Llwyd i lawr, colled y wlad;

Ei fwrw ef a friwai wŷr

(smiting Dafydd Llwyd down,

he was progressing, the land’s loss;

smiting him who shattered men)[32]

As Death says to the Squire in Lydgate’s poem, ‘No man mai fro dethes stroke fle’.[33]

The purpose of these paintings may well have been to terrify: and as with so much else that is designed to shock, they have to become ever more horrific to maintain their impact. However, they also have a more constructive purpose: they warn of the imminence of unexpected death and the need for preparation (in line with the Ars Moriendi tradition), they warn against pride or vanity, they demonstrate contemptus mundi. The dance can be read as subversive - rulers and senior ecclesiastical figures are depicted satirically or critically, Death is the great leveller, and all human attempts to establish hierarchies are ultimately futile. The social order is nevertheless preserved in the way that all orders of society are represented in their appropriate position in the dance.[34]

We must remember, though, that in all these interpretations, Death is emphatically God’s messenger, not the Devil’s. At Lübeck, Death promises the Mayor

Grot Lon schaltu entfan,

Vor din Arbeit, dat du hefst ghedan,

Wil di God dusentvult belonen,

Unde in deme ewighen Levende kronen

(Great wages shall you receive.

For your work that you have done,

God will reward you thousandfold,

and in the eternal life crown [you]).[35]

In the Welsh Ymddiddan yr Enaid a’r Corff (‘The Dialogue of the Soul and the Body’), the Angel describes Death to the Strong Man: ‘Kenadwr yw e yr Jesu’ (‘He is Jesus’ messenger’).[36] At Jungshoved in Denmark, a group of well-dressed young people dance with devils, but this is clearly something other than the Dance of Death.[37] It serves to remind us, though, that the dance is a metaphor for other things as well.

Here it must be relevant that the Llancarfan painting is the same layer of paint as a huge mural of St George (the model to be followed) and the Seven Deadly Sins. The Dance of Death was also linked with the Sins in the murals at Stratford.[38] At Ørslev in Denmark, a frieze of dancers is clearly not the Dance of Death but may relate to the Sins. Two of the figures hold round objects which may be mirrors (vanity, pride) and they are dancing to music played by a rabbit or hare, symbols of both fertility and lust.[39] The Sins were often depicted with their counterparts, the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy, and these were depicted in conjunction with the Dance of Death at Coventry.[40] (The painting to the north of the south-west window at Llancarfan may have a fragment of one of the Corporal Acts of Mercy. It is possible that the sequence continued round to the north wall of the aisle, mirroring the Sins, but nothing now survives.)

We should perhaps not expect all depictions of the macabre to have the same meaning. At Sparham (Norfolk), for example, the figures of Death pointing at a font and a female corpse offering a flower to a male corpse have been interpreted as parodying the sacraments of baptism and holy matrimony.[41] Julian Luxford starts with a more conventional reading as memento mori, a warning against vanity and pride and (in the double figure) an allusion to the Fall. However, he also suggests that the location of the panels (originally part of the rood screen) means they could have a much more positive message. The screen symbolically separated earth and heaven, a division which could be bridged by the redemptive power of the Crucifixion depicted above. So the corpses, for all their hideous decay, bring the reassurance that through death comes birth to eternal life. The corpse standing in the tomb and pointing to the font is thus a particularly powerful image of rebirth. These readings, though, are dependent on the location of the paintings on the screen.[42]

The depiction of Death’s victims (and therefore their significance) can also vary. Some seem to be generic types, the King, the Young Man and so on. Some, though, are clearly portraits. We have already suggested that the Llancarfan Gallant with his Monmouth cap and his left-handed sword may be modelled on a known individual. There are several examples of recognizable kings in European dances. A stone relief of the Dance in Dresden includes clear portraits of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, his brother Ferdinand, George, duke of Saxony, and George’s son Johann. It also seems likely that the King in Holbein’s series of woodcuts was modelled on Francis I of France, and the Emperor is remarkably similar to Dürer’s portrait of Maximilian I.[43] There is no way of identifying the Llancarfan Gallant, but it is interesting to note that the King who exemplifies the sin of Pride, further west on the same wall, rather resembles the young Henry VII. Ian Fell has noted that the devils flanking him look like a parody of the supporters of the royal coat of arms.[44]

The Dance of Death was well known in Wales, usually under its alternative title of the Dawns o Bowls (the Dance of Paul’s). Guto’r Glyn’s elegy to William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, begins by using the Dance as a metaphor for the battlefield at Edgcote:

Dawns o Bowls! Doe’n ysbeiliwyd …

Dawns gwŷr Dinas y Garrai,

Dawns yr ieirll: daw’n nes i rai!

(The Dance of Pauls! Yesterday we were despoiled …

The dance of the men of Doncaster,

the dance of the earls: to some it will come closer yet!)[45]

In the context of Guto’s use of the Dance of Death as a metaphor, it is worth remembering that it is an actual dance, with its own complex of etiquette, customs and symbolism.[46] For Guto, though, war could also be a dance: in his early elegy to Mathew Goch of Maelor he spoke of a particularly destructive chevauchée as ‘Dawns mawr ar hyd Aensio a Maen’ (‘a great dance through Anjou and Maine’).[47]

Other Welsh poets used references to the Dance of Death for different purposes. Dafydd Johnston has recently discovered a new cywydd by Lewys Glyn Cothi in NLW MS Peniarth 54:

ynghappel powls i gwelais

ddawns drud i ddwyn oes o drais

dir yw ynn wedyr annel

ware r dawns yr awr i del

Oeri a nessav yr nod

a wnai bob hen heb wybod

a henhav vegis vyn hait

yr wyf inav ar venait

(In the chapel of Paul’s I saw

A cruel dance to take a life by violence.

Once the aim is taken we must

Play the dance when it comes.

Every old person grows cold

And gets nearer to the mark without knowing it,

And I too, like my grandfather,

Am getting older, upon my soul! )[48]

Unlike Guto’s comparison of the Dance with the random slaughter of the battlefield, this poem is mainly concerned with the poet’s feelings about his age and predictably approaching death. In this case, Lewys clearly speaks of having seen the dance at St Paul’s. There is nothing in the poem to give a firm date, but it must have been composed fairly late in the poet’s life. He died in the late 1480s so we could suggest a date a little later than Guto’s poem of 1469.

Andrew Breeze has identified another four references to the Dance in Welsh poetry, though one of these, in a poem on the ubi sunt theme by Siôn Cent, may predate Lydgate and the St Paul’s Dance.[49] The other three are from Anglesey. Lewys Môn’s marwnad to Sir Thomas Salusbury (d. 1505) begins with a reference to the Dance as the Death of Paul’s:

Para gwymp i ŵr y god?

Pa loes Angau Powls yngod?

(What kind of fall is this for a wealthy man? What agony of the Death of Paul’s yonder?)[50]

In another marwnad, to John Grey, second baron Powis, Lewys Môn clearly alludes to the Dance:

Pob pennaeth, sywaeth [?yswaeth], o’i swydd

A lusg yn ôl ei ysgwydd;

Diriaid ydyw’r aderyn

Dwyn sy fyw i’r dawns a fyn …

Llin brenin oll yn braenu

(Each leader, alas, from his office, trails after his shoulder; terrible is the bird, taking the living into the dance … The king’s lineage all decaying) [51]

An even more graphic description of the Dance appears in Dafydd Trefor’s marwnad to Owain ap Maredudd ap Thomas. In the opening to the poem, Death is described as ‘ ‘sgrwd tyn o’i ysgrin … gawell esgyrn a gïau’ (‘the stiff corpse from his tomb … a cage of bones and sinews’) with ‘garrau a gên gwr y gôd’ (‘the shanks and jaw of a bogeyman’). He leads all levels of humanity into the dance:

Ledio’r pab yn ddirabedd

A’i fwrw fo’n frau i’w fedd.

Dwyn’r emprwr o dwr ‘i dad

Tynnu’r ymherodr tanad.

Ni pherchi di gwedi gwin

Na barwniaid na brenin.

Y newyddian yn weddol

O’i grud a dynnud yn d’ol …

Dyfynnaist hyd y fynwent

Bawb o’i radd bybyr rhent.

(Leading the pope without laughter, and throwing him corrupted to his grave; stealing the emperor from his father’s tower, pulling his imperial majesty underneath. You do not respect barons or king after wine. You fairly pulled the newborn from his cradle to follow you … You summoned everyone in his degree to the graveyard - a fine rent.)[52]

This is clearly based on a specific Dance of Death. Castles appear in the background of several Dances - behind the emperor in the Lübeck and Tallinn versions, for example. However, the depiction of the emperor actually being dragged from a tower is, as far as I know, unique. The reference to the bird in Lewys Môn’s poem is also idiosyncratic. Since three of the Welsh references to the Dance come from Anglesey we might even speculate that there was a Dance mural somewhere on the island.

Andrew Breeze has suggested that the Siôn Cent poem mentioned above is ‘suspiciously early’ to be a reference to the Dance of Death and could better be read as a figurative allusion to dance in general. The reference is certainly less detailed that the descriptive passages by Lewys Môn and Dafydd Trefor and it makes no specific mention of the ‘Dance of Paul’s’. However, it is a clear reference to a dance involving death. Siôn Cent is generally agreed to have died in about 1430,[53] and 1430 is one of the earliest dates suggested for the Dance at St Paul’s.[54] It is not impossible, though, that he could have seen the Paris Danse. Oosterwijk has also suggested that there may have been even earlier German versions which could have inspired some of Lydgate’s more idiosyncratic wording.[55] Could Siôn Cent have seen one of these - or is his brief reference evidence for a metaphorical association of death with dancing before the Dance of Death reached its final form? It is worth considering his exact wording:

A’r undawns, gwn ei wrandaw,

I ninnau, diau y daw

(And the same dance (I know how to hear it) will certainly come to us).[56]

Sion says he can hear (rather than see) the dance - which may suggest an inspiration from poetry rather than painting. It is even possible that he had encountered the Spanish Dança general de la Muerte. The English play The Castle of Perseverance has presented a similar problem in establishing the origins of its references to the Dance. The most recent edition of the Castle suggests a date between 1400 and 1425 for the original manuscript, though the earliest surviving copy dates from about 1440.[57] 1425 is too early for the St Paul’s Dance and barely possible for the Paris version: but it could well derive from one of the German or Spanish texts.

At this point we need to beware of two of the traps we can fall into when we study the visual and material culture of medieval Wales. We are fatally prone to under-rating ourselves, seeing ourselves as playing catch-up with England and Europe. Perhaps more insidious is our tendency to ‘me-too’ ism. We identify a theme in the English or European sources, we find Welsh parallels, we become very excited at the thought that we too can find examples of that theme – when in fact what we have could be something rather different.

At first sight the art of the macabre in Wales looks like a pale reflection of the English and European tradition. The Llancarfan wall painting is our nearest approach to the Dance of Death. Death with his dart appears on the frame of the wood carving now known as the ‘Cotehele Tester’. This is generally assumed to have been part of the bed known as the Derwydd Bed, commissioned by Sir Rhys ap Thomas to commemorate the great tournament he organized at Carew (Pembs) in 1506 on the first anniversary of his elevation to the Order of the Garter.[58] Richard Bebb has recently argued for a slightly later date and a provenance in the southern march, based on the detail of the tree ring patterns in the timber. A recent report on the dendrochronology gives a date of 1524-50: the iconography of the carvings suggests the earlier part of this time frame, as it is perhaps less likely that the emblem of the Five Wounds of Christ would have been used so conspicuously after its prominence in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The report on the patterning of the tree rings also stated that ‘Dendroprovenancing suggests that the timber originated within the Welsh Marches...An especially good match (T-Value of over 10) was found with Michaelchurch Escley in south-west Herefordshire’.[59] Whether it is Pembrokeshire in 1506 or the southern march twenty or more years later, though, it is an interesting addition to the corpus as it depicts Death in his most aggressive mode, brandishing a spear or dart.

A very crudely carved figure of Death appears on a misericord in the former Dominican friary at Brecon (now the chapel of Christ’s College, Brecon).[60] This is part of a very amateurish set of twenty-two misericords including carvings of a lion, a mastiff and a unicorn. Lord suggests these date from c. 1525-35 and that they are part of the very late revival of monastic life in Wales.[61] The carving of over twenty choir stalls, for a community which at the Dissolution numbered only ten, has parallels in the even more elaborate stalls at the Benedictine priory of Abergavenny. The crude carving and rough construction suggest very local manufacture - which in turn suggests local inspiration and design. Francis Douce pointed out the links between the Dominican order and the Dance of Death, suggesting it may have been influenced by their preaching activities. Some of the most famous European examples, at Basle, Colmar and Bern, were in Dominican cloisters.[62]

Wales also has a scattering of cadaver tombs, though they are all comparatively low-key. There are no worms, no toads, unlike the Tewkesbury and Oddington monuments.[63] A virtually complete cadaver effigy in St Mary’s, Tenby is traditionally identified as that of Archdeacon John Tynby or Denby, who died in 1499, though there is no inscription. A rather more fragmentary cadaver in Llandaff Cathedral may be another ecclesiastic. The legs seem to have been carved separately and attached to the plinth by wooden dowels: the legs are now missing so the drapery of the lower part of the shroud can be seen.[64] A much more crudely carved cadaver at St Dogmaels (Pembs), possibly commemorating a member of the monastic community there, has also lost one of its legs. At St Brides (Pembs), Lloyd thought the drapery on a medieval effigy was ‘shroud- like’, but it is in fact the chasuble of a priest.[65] As well as these effigies, mention should be made of the unusual alabaster panels on the chest tombs of Thomas and John White, also in St Mary’s, Tenby. Both tombs have side panels showing groups of small shrouded bodies. This is, though, a very small number of cadaver tombs. Part of the problem may be that Wales has so few memorial brasses, and the brass offered much more scope for detailed depiction of the cadaver as well as lengthy interpretative inscriptions.

As well as the references to the Dance of Death, more general imagery drawn from the macabre tradition appears in later medieval Welsh poetry. Dafydd Ddu o Hiraddug’s terrifying description of bodily decay is a particularly graphic example:

Y corff afrifed i bryfed mewn budr gaered

Yn fwyd i bryfed heb ged gydwedd,

Llyffaint braint brydnod, a chynron diglod

A phryfed hynod nod, a nadredd,

yn sach drewedig, yn sur doddedig ...

Y llygaid glwysion yn dyllau crynion,

Yn llawn o gynrhon, myn gwirionedd;

Y genau gweddus a fu chwarëus,

A fu ryfygus, yn oer ei agwedd,

Yn dwll mingamddu, yn ambell ei gary,

Yn dyllgorn digddu, ddygn ddifröedd;

A’r dannedd gwynion fal hen ebillion

Yn esgyrn llwydion budron bydredd.

(The despised corpse for insects in a vile hold

Food for insects without favour or agreement,

Privileged desirous toads, and maggots of infamy

And incredible insects of notoriety, and snakes

In a fetid sack, rotten and sour ...

The beautiful eyes now rounded holes

Full of maggots, in truth;

The comely mouth, which was so playful,

And was haughty, cold its manner

A sardonic black hole, unlikely its loving,

Black sorrowful nape, dour sadness:

And the white teeth like old pegs

Dirty grey putrid bones) [66]

It has to be said, though, that this poem is something of an exception in the extremely graphic nature of the language used. The marwnad was intended to praise and to commemorate: gruesome descriptions of rotting flesh were hardly appropriate.

The macabre also features in the late medieval drama tradition, though there is considerable ambivalence in language. In Ymddiddan yr Enaid a’r Corff, the Dialogue of the Soul and the Body (generally seen as part of the tradition of the macabre) the Soul accuses the Body

Yr wtin essmwyth yn gorwedd

mewn bedd byr o ssayth droydfedd

‘you are lying comfortably in a short grave of seven foot’)[67]

though later on, even after the Soul has been forgiven, the Body says

Er ym henaid i gael trigaredd

Yma y mae yn rhaid i mi orwedd

ymysk y llyffeint ar nadredd

(Even though my soul has received mercy, I must lie here among the toads and snakes)[68]

Death also appears in the morality/anterliwt Y Gwr Cadarn but as a non-speaking part with no evidence for his appearance.

As in the wider European tradition, these depictions of death and the dead were multivalent. They served as a memento mori, reminders of the imminence of death. This is perhaps set out most clearly on an inscribed slab which Colin Gresham recorded at Chirk Castle. He suggested a date in the late thirteenth century, based mainly on the form of the Lombardic capitals in the inscription. This he read as

[HIC I]ACET

[IOHA]NNES

[FILIU]S NICHO

[LAI] CANTA

RI +

S : QWIS : ERIS : QUI : TRANCIERIS : STA : P’LEGE : PLORA +

SUM : QUOD : ERIS : FURAM : & : QUOD : ES : P’ : ME : PRECOR : ORA : PATER : NOST’

(‘Here lies John son of Nicholas, precentor. Whoever you are who may pass by, stop, read and weep. I am what you will be, I was what you are. Please pray a Paternoster for me.’)[69]

If Gresham’s dating is correct, this is a very early example of the ‘Sum quod eris’ trope and merits further study. Unfortunately, the stone can no longer be inspected: it was last seen in the catalogue of a London antique dealer in 2005 and its present whereabouts are unknown.

The theme of Death the leveller can also be found in Welsh elegiac verse. Guto’s description of the battle of Edgcote described ‘Dwyn yr holl dynion i’r rhwyd’, the snatching up of all the men into the net.[70] His elegy to Siôn ap Madog Pilstwn of Hafod-y-wern remarked on Death’s indiscriminate taking of young and old:

Cynnar y gwna’r ddaearen

Cyflehau ieuanc, fal hen

(Early does the earth

place the young in her, like the old)[71]

However, it is also possible to argue for a more positive reading of cadaver tombs and of the art of the macabre in general. In medieval approaches to the good death, considerable stress was placed on ways of dealing with the temptation to despair.[72] Cadaver tombs can be considered in this light: confronting the reality of bodily decay in the relatively sanitised form of stone carving or wall painting is akin to modern therapeutic practice for dealing with phobias. As a reminder of the need for repentance and proper preparation for death, the art of the macabre also served as a reassurance of the possibility of salvation.[73]

Cadaver tombs and other depictions of the dead provided a powerful stimulus for prayer for their souls. This could be explicit, as in the case of the souls in Purgatory in a wall painting at Swanbourne (Bucks) whose speech scroll reads Miseremini mei saltem vos amici mei (Have pity on me, at least you my friends), a line from the Book of Job which also appears in the Office of the Dead.[74] Numerous shroud brasses in England and elsewhere included petitions for prayer. Requests for prayer were the norm on medieval memorials but were made more powerful by the depiction of the deceased shorn of the trappings of worldly power and humbled by the process of decay.

Prayer for the dead has been seen by historians as the defining feature of late medieval Catholicism, one which became a flashpoint for controversy during the Reformation.[75] The evidence from late medieval wills (in Wales as in England) suggests that that leaving money for prayer for one’s soul was a priority. This as much as anything else explains the popularity of tombs and wall paintings depicting the dead as suffering torment in Purgatory and beseeching the living to pray for them. However, as Rhianydd Biebrach has observed, in many cases these legacies are neither as complex nor as generous in Wales as those in England. Indeed, there is what she describes as a ‘tranquility’ in the Welsh approach to death.[76] While English versions of the Dialogue of the Body and the Soul frequently ended with the Soul being dragged to Hell, in the Welsh version the soul is saved.[77]

The same approach is reflected in the poetry. The traditional marwnadau focused on praise for the lineage and virtues of the deceased, with outpouring of grief that they have been taken from us (Guto was particularly fond of likening his floods of tears to Noah’s Flood). They show rather more confidence in the fate of the soul. In his marwnad for Archdeacon Ithel ap Robert (d. 1382), Iolo Goch envisages the angels bearing him to Heaven:

Anfon engylion yng ngwŷl

I’w gyrchu, fwya’r gorchwyl,

Mae Duw gwyn, amodig oedd,

Er moliant i’r fil filioedd …

Drwg y gweddai dra gweiddi

Am ŵr fal ef, nef i ni,

Gwedi cael, hael henuriad,

Oes deg gan Dduw ac ystad …

Oni ddêl, hoedl ddeau law

Dyddbrawd yn y diweddbraw;

Yno y gwelwn ein gwaladr,

Gwae a gwynt, cadarnbwynt cadr;

Ni bydd ar ben Mynydd maith

Olifer, porffer perffaith,

Iôn archdiagon degach

Nag fydd Ithel uchel ach.

(Holy God is sending angels as a guard to fetch him, greatest task, it was agreed, in praise of the thousand thousands …

Excessive lamentation is unfitting for a man like him, heaven to us, after he has had, generous elder, a fair life and state from God …

Until, at the time of the right hand, the Judgement Day comes in the final testing; then we will see our prince, woe and wind, strong firm condition; there will not be on top of the high Mount of Olives, perfect hero, a fairer lord archdeacon than will be Ithel of noble lineage).[78]

There are certainly requests for God’s mercy: at the end of Guto’s elegy to Dafydd Llwyd and Catrin of Abertanad, for example, he prays

Trugarog fo’r Grog a’i grau,

Trugaredd i’r tri gorau

(May the Cross and His blood be merciful,

may there be mercy to the greatest three)[79]

However, this has almost the feel of a ‘request requiring the answer yes’ - his assumption is clearly that God will be merciful, that one has only to ask. Admittedly, some of the Welsh poetry - about the Last Judgement, for example - suggests considerable anxiety. Lewys Morgannwg wrote vividly of his terror of seeing Satan at the head of the balance when his soul was weighed:

Ofni gweled f’un gelyn

Ym mhen tafl am enaid dyn[80]

On the other hand, Guto’r Glyn’s elegy to Gweurful ferch Madog confidently anticipated the Archangel Michael weighing her goodness in the balance.[81] His own last poems reflect the same ultimate confidence. While he spoke of his fear of death and judgement, he was assured of God’s sustenance:

F’un Ceidwad, fy Nuw cadarn,

Fy nawdd fo yn Nydd y Farn.

Fy noddfa, fy niweddfyd,

Fo nef a’i gartref i gyd!.

(My one guardian, my steadfast God,

may he be my support on Doomsday.

May heaven and all its abodes

be my sanctuary, the end of my life!)[82]

Gutyn Owain’s elegy to Guto’r Glyn praised his valour as a soldier as well as his skill as a poet and confidently anticipated his salvation:

A’r ail oes i gael yr aeth

Gwledd Dduw a’i arglwyddïaeth

(And for the next life he has gone to receive

God’s feast and kingdom)[83]

Traditional Welsh praise poetry is thus surprisingly close in tone to the ‘new’ Renaissance cult of fame which (in Catholic Europe as well as Protestant England and Wales) largely took over from pleas for intercession for the dead.[84]

Possibly, then, the relative absence of evidence of the macabre in Welsh art really is evidence of absence. Possibly, Wales was not lagging behind Europe in new thinking on religion and commemoration. Change does not always look like ripples spreading out on a pond. Wales really was different - and in attitudes to death and patterns of patterns of commemoration Wales was arguably ahead of the game. This would mean that the Llancarfan painting of Death and the Gallant, exciting though the find is, is really not typical of the medieval Welsh response to death and dying.

-----------------------

[1] This article was first presented as a paper at the ‘Guto’r Glyn a Chymru’r Bymthegfed Ganrif / Guto’r Glyn and Fifteenth-century Wales’ conference organized by the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies with AHRC support in Aberystwyth in September 2012. I am grateful to Dafydd Johnston and Ann Parry Owen, and to the delegates at the conference for a very illuminating discussion of the ideas in the paper, and for several valuable suggestions then and later. I am also grateful to Ian Fell, the heritage interpreter at Llancarfan, for a number of valuable suggestions and to John Gwynfor Jones for locating some references. David Hale, a student at the University of Wales, Newport, is currently working on the representation of Death in later medieval Welsh poetry and has helped me with translations.

[2] Information on the wall paintings is currently to be found on the parish web site at (accessed 13.12.12). Jane Rutherfoord, who is heading the conservation of the wall paintings, is also planning a detailed scholarly study of both the iconography and the conservation process, which has involved innovative technologies.

[3] Rouse, C. The dance of death painted panels on the Markham Chantry Chapel (Newark : St. Mary Magdalene, Newark, 1978)

[4] Miriam Gill, pers. com.; cf Kate Giles, Anthony Masinton and Geoff Arnott, ‘Visualising the Guild Chapel, Stratford-upon-Avon: digital models as research tools in buildings archaeology’, Internet Archaeology 32(1) at (accessed 13.12.12.)

[5] Francis Douce, The Dance of Death Exhibited … (London: William Pickering, 1833), 52-3.

[6] Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Lessons in "hopping": the Dance of Death and the Chester mystery cycle’, Comparative Drama, 36, no 3,4 (Fall/Winter 2002-03), 249-87

[7] Sophie Oosterwijk, 'Of corpses, constables and kings: the Danse Macabre in Late Medieval and Renaissance Culture', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 157 (2004), 61-90, available online at . For a detailed study of the Sparham panels see Julian Luxford, ‘The Sparham corpse panels: unique revelations of Death from late fifteenth-century England’, Antiquaries Journal, 90 (August 2010), 299-340; for illustrations of the Sparham panels see (accessed 13.12.12.)

[8] Now at the Nyköpingshus Museum (Sweden): see (accessed 30.8.12)

[9] (accessed 13.12.12)

[10] For illustrations of these see (accessed 14.12.12)

[11] Gwenan Jones, Three Welsh Religious Plays (Bala: R. Evans & Son, 1939), pp. 252-3. I am grateful to Ian Fell for spotting this reference.

[12] There is now an extensive literature on the Dance of Death. An overview is provided in Giles, Masinton and Arnott, ‘Visualising the Guild Chapel’, 4.6, online at (accessed 13.12.12.). Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘ “Fro Paris to Inglonde”? the danse macabre in text and image in late-medieval England’ (University of Leiden Ph D thesis, 2009) reviews the earlier literature and reproduces several of her earlier articles including 'Of corpses, constables and kings: the Danse Macabre in Late Medieval and Renaissance Culture', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 157 (2004), 61-90. The whole thesis is available online at . See also idem, 'Of dead kings, dukes and constables: the historical context of the Danse Macabre in late medieval Paris', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 161 (2008), 131-62; Sophie Oosterwijk and Stefanie Knöll (eds), Mixed Metaphors: the Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011)

[13] For illustrations of these and numerous others see and (accessed 14.12.12.)

[14] The Großbasel Dance is discussed with several illustrations by Susanne Warda, ‘Dance, Music and Inversion: the reversal of the natural order in the medieval Danse Macabre’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, pp. 73-100

[15] Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘ “Depicte ones on a walle”: the danse macabre in Paris’ in idem, ‘Fro Paris to Inglonde’, pp. 57-98, online at (accessed 14.12.12.)

[16] Lenke Kovács, ‘Frightened or Fearless: different ways of facing Death in the sixteenth-century Majorcan play Representació de la Mort’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, p. 207 and references therein

[17] ‘Lessons in “Hopping” ’, pp. 255-6

[18] Oosterwijk, ‘Depicte ones on a walle’, p. 61

[19] A. Appleford, 'The Dance of Death in London: John Carpenter, John Lydgate, and the Daunce of Poulys', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38(2) (2008), 285-314; Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘ “Owte of the ffrensshe”: John Lydgate and the Dance of Death’ in idem, ‘Fro Paris to Inglonde’, pp. 99-136, online at (accessed 14.12.12.); idem, 'Death, memory and commemoration: John Lydgate and the "Macabrees Daunce" at old St Paul's Cathedral, London' in C. Barron and C. Burgess (eds), Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England: proceedings of the 2008 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Symposium Proceedings 20, Donington: Shaun Tyas. 2010), pp.185-201

[20] Oosterwijk, ‘Of corpses, constables and kings’, pp. 36-7, at

[21] Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 304.

[22] Christine Kralik, ‘Dialogue and Violence in Medieval Illuminations of the Three Living and the Three Dead’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, 133-67

[23] E. I. Rowlands, ‘Religious Poetry in Late Medieval Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 30 (1-2) (Nov. 1982), 1-19, p. 18

[24] John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse (London: Routledge, 2nd ed., 2009), esp. pp. 216-23; cf Oosterwijk, ‘Fro Paris to Inglonde’, pp. 12-13, online at (accessed 14.12.12.)

[25] Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Dance, Dialogue and Duality: fatal encounters in the medieval Danse Macabre’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, 10-16

[26] Warda, ‘Dance, Music and Inversion’, pp 92-4

[27] Illustrated at . (accessed 14.12.12). The text at discusses the Dance and related tomb carvings and references Bengt Lindskog and Göran Nylander, ‘Döden dansar i St Petrikyrkan i Malmö’, in Sydsvenska medicinhistoriska sällskapets årsskrift 10 (1973), 51-66.

[28] Oosterwijk ‘Food for Worms’ online p. 229

[29] Warda, ‘Dance, Music and Inversion’, pp. 83-4

[30] Kralik, ‘Dialogue and Violence’: illustration on p. 146.

[31] Currently at (accessed 16.12.12)

[32] (accessed 16.12.12)

[33] Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Dance, Dialogue and Duality: fatal encounters in the medieval Danse Macabre’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, pp. 25-9; See also Sophie Oosterwijk, '"For no man mai fro dethes stroke fle". Death and Danse Macabre iconography in memorial art', Church Monuments, 23 (2008), 62-87, 166-68

[34] Warda, ‘Dance, Music and Inversion’, pp.81-9

[35] (accessed 15.12.12)

[36] Gwenan Jones, Three Welsh Religious Plays (Bala: R. Evans & Son, 1939), pp.256-7. The Debate was a popular theme in medieval religious texts and appears in a number of Welsh versions from the Black Book of Carmarthen onwards: Catherine A. McKenna, The Medieval Welsh Religious Lyric (Belmont, Mass.: Ford & Bailie, 1991), pp. 74, 104. For more detailed studies of the Welsh Ymddiddan see J. E. Caerwyn Williams, ‘Ymryson ac Ymddiddan y Corff a’r Enaid’, National Library of Wales Journal 4 (1945-6), 184-8 ; J. Gwyn Griffiths, ‘Tarddiad Syniadol y Dialogus inter Corpus et Animam a’r Ffurfiau Cymraeg’, Llen Cymru 20 (1997), 1-11

[37] Illustrated with commentary and references at (accessed 15.12.12)

[38] (final paragraph)

[39] Illustrated at (accessed 15.12.12)

[40] Paul Hardwick, English Medieval Misericords: the margins of meaning (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), p. 48, referencing Mary Dormer Harris, ‘The Misericords of Coventry’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Birmingham Archaeological Society 52 (1927), 262-3 and pls V-VI.

[41] (accessed 15.12.12)

[42] Luxford, ‘The Sparham Corpse Panels’, pp. 327-35

[43] Oosterwijk, ‘Dance, Dialogue and Duality’, pp. 35-6.

[44] Pers. comm.

[45] (accessed 16.12.12)

[46] Frances Eustace with Pamela M. King, ‘Dances of the Living and the Dead: a study of danse macabre imagery within the context of late-medieval dance culture’ in Oosterwijk and Knöll, Mixed Metaphors, pp. 43-71

[47] (accessed 19.12.12); cf Barry J. Lewis, ‘Opening Up the Archives of Welsh Poetry: Welshness and Englishness during the Hundred Years’ War’, p. 17, online at (accessed 19.12.12)

[48] Transcription and translation by Dafydd Johnston: I am grateful to him for providing me with this and for discussing the poem’s significance. For an edition of this poem see Dafydd Johnston, ‘Cywydd Newydd gan Lewys Glyn Cothi’, Dwned, 18 (2012), 49-60.

[49] ‘The Dance of Death’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 13 (1987), 87-96

[50] E. I. Rowlands (ed.), Gwaith Lewys Môn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), p. 208

[51] Rowlands, Gwaith Lewys Môn, p. 298

[52] Irene George, ‘The Poems of Syr Dafydd Trefor’, Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society, 1935, p. 102; translation adapted from Breeze, ‘Dance of Death’ p. 95.

[53] Dictionary of Welsh Biography, now available online at

[54] Oosterwijk, ‘Owte of the frenshe’, p. 108

[55] ‘Lessons in “Hopping”: the Dance of Death and the Chester Mystery Cycle’, Comparative Drama 36.3-4 (Fall-Winter 2002-3), 249-87, pp. 255-6

[56] Henry Lewis, Thomas Roberts and Ifor Williams (eds), Cywyddau Iolo Goch ac Eraill (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2nd ed., 1937), p. 271

[57] David N. Klausner (ed.), The Castle of Perseverance (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2010). I am grateful to Stephen Wright of the Catholic University of America for this reference.

[58] Peter Lord, Medieval Vision (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 267-9; R. A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his family: a study in the Wars of the Roses and early Tudor politics (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), pp. 245-58

[59] Richard Bebb, pers. comm.

[60] Illustrated in Lord, Medieval Vision p. 234

[61] Lord, Medieval Vision pp. 234-5

[62] Francis Douce, The Dance of Death … (London: William Pickering, 1833) p. 36. I am grateful to Chris Buckley for leading me to this reference. See also Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 69

[63] Oosterwijk, ‘Food for worms - food for thought: the appearance and interpretation of the ‘verminous’ cadaver in England and Europe’, online at ch 7, pp. 238-45, though as she says verminous cadaver effigies are comparatively rare in England as well.

[64] Rhianydd Biebrach, ‘The Cadaver Monument in Llandaff Cathedral’, Church Monuments Society Newsletter 24(2) (Winter 2008/9), 16-18. Subsequent inspection by members of the Church Monuments Society has confirmed that the dowels were probably the original fastening of the legs and not the result of later repair.

[65] Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield, The Buildings of Wales: Pembrokeshire (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 383

[66] Dafydd Johnston, Llên yr Uchelwyr. Hanes Beirniadol Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg 1300-1525 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005),  p. 209; I am grateful to David Hale for this reference and for the translation

[67] Gwenan Jones, Three Welsh Religious Plays (Bala: R. Evans & Son, 1939), pp. 240-1

[68] Jones, Three Welsh Religious Plays, pp. 252-3

[69] Colin Gresham, Medieval Stone Carving in North Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1968), pp. 77-9

[70] (accessed 16.12.12)

[71] (accessed 16.12.12)

[72] See for example the woodcuts in Duffy, Stripping of the Altars figs 117-9 and at (accessed 18.12.12)

[73] On the positive implications of the doctrine of Purgatory see Miriam Gill, ‘Late medieval wall painting in England : content and context (c1330-c1530)’ (Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London) Ph D thesis, 2002), p. 390

[74] M. Gray, ‘Images of Words: iconographies of text and the construction of sacred space in medieval church wall painting’ in Joseph Sterrett and Peter Thomas (eds), Sacred Text - Sacred Space (Leiden: Brill, 2011) pp. 15-34

[75] See, for example, Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 8; Ralph Houlbrooke, ‘Death, Church and Family in England between the Late Fifteenth and the Early Eighteenth Centuries’ in idem (ed.), Death, Ritual and Bereavement (London: Routledge, 1989), 25-42, esp. p 36; Clare Gittings, Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1984), and Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). For the European dimension, A. N. Galpern ‘The Legacy of Late Medieval Religion in Sixteenth-century Champagne’ in C. Trinkaus with H. O. Oberman (eds), The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 141-76, esp. p. 149. For a discussion of the Welsh context, M. Gray, ‘Reformin[pic]JKLtuP Q Ò

Ó

Ô

¼½OP[76]PQýþ«¬åGHˆ¤âãKLN ñâÍÁµ¦—Í—†Í—Í—Í—Í—Í—Í—Í—w—Í—g—g—Í—[h[3¸hñ\å5?CJaJh[3¸hñ\å6?CJOJQJaJh[3¸h¹mƒCJOJQJaJ h[3¸hñ\å0J*CJOJQJaJh[3¸hñ\åCJOJQJaJh[3¸h[3¸CJOJQJaJh[3¸CJOJQJaJhñ\åCJOJQJaJ)jh[3¸hñ\å0J*CJOJQJU[pic]aJh[3¸hôO»CJOJQJaJg memory: commemoration of the dead in sixteenth-century Wales’, Welsh History Review 26 (2) (Dec. 2012), 4-52

[77] In a paper at the 2011 Sir John Lloyd Conference at Bangor University: I am grateful to Rhianydd Biebrach and Barry Lewis for subsequent discussion of this.

[78] Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, p. 70; Jones, Three Welsh Religious Plays, pp. 252-3, 258-9

[79] Dafydd Johnston (ed.), Iolo Goch: Poems (Llandysul: Gomer, 1993), no. 15. I am grateful to Dafydd Johnston for this reference.

[80] (accessed 16.12.12)

[81] A. Cynfael Lake (ed.), Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg. 2 vols. (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 1998), ii, no 103 (p 507).

[82] (accessed 28.12.12)

[83] (accessed 28.12.12)

[84] (accessed 28.12.12)

[85] For a discussion of the ‘cult of fame’ see Peter Sherlock, Monuments and Memory in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 132

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