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The Northern Muse
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William Dunbar
William Dunbar was a different kind of poet altogether from Robert Henryson. He was closely connected to the court of King James IV and many of his poems are addressed to the king and queen, refer to topical events, places and people and celebrate special occasions like the king's marriage, the Thrissill and the Rois. He received a royal pension from 1500 to 1513 and took priests orders about 1504. His poem The Golden Targe is an allegorical poem full of brilliant imagery and aureate language, after the fashion of the time. But undoubtedly the one that would most appeal to and entertain modem readers is The Twa Mariitt Wemen and the Wedo, a frank, uninhibited and bawdy discussion by three women on the nature of marriage, written in unrhymed alliterative verse. That this great piece of satire was written by a man should give modem feminists food for thought.
The poem opens misleadingly with a beautiful description of three ladies sitting in a garden, like a picture from a courtly romance, but when they begin to speak, the romantic illusion is shattered. The widow asks the two married women if they are happy in their choice of husband and if married life pleases them. It appears that - to put it mildly - nothing could be further from the truth. The first married woman declares :-
"It that ye call the blist band that bindis so fast
'Is bair of blis and bailfull and greit barrat wirkis.
(Being married is joyless and wretched and full of strife)
Ye speir, had I fre chois, gif I wald cheis bettir ?
Chenyeis ay are to eschew and changeis ar sweit
(Chains are to be avoided and changes are sweet)
She'd like to have the chance to be chosen and to choose again, like birds who choose a new mate every year.
Than suld I cast me to keik in kirk and in markat
And all the cuntre about, kyngis court and uther,
Quhair I ane garland micht get aganis the nixt yeir
For to perfurneis farth the wek quhen failyeit the tother.
(She'd get a new young man for the next year to perform the work when
the other one failed)
She describes the man she's got in less than flattering terms "I have ane wallidrag, ane worme, ane auld wobat carle" and expresses her revulsion of his dirty habits with "To se him scart his awin skyn grit scunner I think." His lovemaking also leaves much to be desired, for "with his hard hurcheone scyn sa heklis he my chekis" - hurcheon meaning hedgehog. Even more frank disclosures follow about how she makes him pay for her favours, referring to him as "larbar:" impotent and "carybald" monstrous" and saying how she makes him promise her a silk kerchief before he can go ahead :-
Yit leit I never that larbar my leggis ga between
To fyle my flesche na fummyll me without a fee gret..
For or he clym on my corse, that carybald forlane,
I have conditioun of curche, of kersp allther fynest.
The second wife is no more content with her husband. She is glad of the chance to unburden herself of a "ragment fra rute of my hert" a catalogue of heartfelt grievances. Her husband, she claims, is a thoroughly immoral character, who consorted with prostitutes:-
My husband wes a hur maister, the hugeast on erd,
Tharfor I hait him with my hert, sa help me our Lord.
Apparently he has led such a dissolute life, he has rendered himself old before his time and no use to her. Again the earthy language makes it very clear exactly what she means. 'His lume waxes larbar (remember "larbar" means impotent) and lies into swoune." One wonders why she married him, but she says it all happened before he met her:-
He has bene waistit upon wemen or he me wif chesit.
He must have been quite good-looking, but he disappointed her, "He had the glemyng of gold and wes bot glase fundin." If she had the chance to choose again, she would "half a fresch feir to fang in myn armys" a new man to tak in my arms.
The widow then has her say and as you might expect, she gives the two young wives the benefit of her experience. The answer it seems is to be two-faced. "Be dragonis baith and dowis ay in double forme." She has had two husbands, neither to her liking. One was a grey-haired old man, who coughed up phlegm, whom she kept besotted with her "With kissing and clapping." At the same time, she had a bit on the side, "a lufsummar leid my lust for to slokyn" a more attractive man to satisfy her. Her second husband was "a merchand, myghti of gudis" whom she obviously married for his money, although he was beneath her socially. This was the stick she beat him with, treating him like a servant and making him pay for her fine clothes and flattering him, while she despised him. Now he is dead, she lives a happy life, although she keeps up the act of being a sorrowing widow:-
Deid is now that dyvour and dollin in erd (buried in earth)
With him deit all my dule and drery thoghtis.
Dunbar does not paint a flattering picture of these three women, but the characters are very convincingly drawn, and that makes the satire doubly effective. All human folly is here, not just the female part of it, and one feels that Dunbar was observing from the life around him, in all its colourful and earthy variety.