I Wende To Dede, a 15th-Century Vado Mori

Collette de Venoix (Tully McCombs)



Stowe manuscripts, Wikipedia entry
Lector
Hollander, 11
Minarikova
Vérard, 15
Alternatively ruin and conceal. Stevick, 152
Luria, 243
Jokinen
Luria, 248
Pronunciation charts from "How to Speak Middle English"
Benson



I wende to dede

A 15th Century vado mori on Death
by
Collete de Venoix (Tully McCombs)
Finished March of 2015

Figure 1. Manuscript copy of "I wende to ded" featuring a miniature of a pope, a king, and a knight, being threatened by a skeleton with a spear illustrating the Dialogue with Death. Figure 1. Manuscript copy of "I wende to ded" featuring a miniature of a pope, a king, and a knight, being threatened by a skeleton with a spear illustrating the Dialogue with Death. 
Figure 1. Manuscript copy of "I wende to ded" featuring a miniature of a pope, a king, and a knight, being threatened by a skeleton with a spear illustrating the Dialogue with Death. 
Figure 1. Manuscript copy of "I wende to ded" featuring a miniature of a pope, a king, and a knight, being threatened by a skeleton with a spear illustrating the Dialogue with Death. 


Contents
Introduction 3
Provenance of the poem 3
Analysis of the poem 3
Rhyme scheme and meter 4
Imagery 5
Performance context 6
Social context 7
Pronunciation and language 7
Great vowel shift 8
Rules of pronunciation 9
Phonetic version of the poem 10
Appendix 1. Vowel placement 11
Bibliography 12



Introduction
My name is Collette de Venoix, Venoix being a small village outside of Caens, France. Today, I shall be performing a 15th century Middle English poem on the theme of death. I chose this poem because when I looked up the words to a different poem from the same area one day, this was the poem below it on the web page. I have to say, this poem, called I wende to dede, fascinated me. And so over the next week or two, I did a little bit of preliminary research and discovered to my delight that it was from the 15th century, well in period. So began the piece of documentation that you are currently reading.
Provenance of the poem
According to the British Library, the Stowe manuscript was originally made for a Benedictine nunnery. I wende to dede is a nameless poem written by an unknown author found in Stowe manuscript number 39, dating from the first half of the 15th century, as well as two other manuscripts. The Stowe manuscript was originally stored at Stowe House near Buckingham. This poem is a vado mori, or a poem about death, a part of the macabre genre. While most vado moris were not illustrated, the three manuscripts showing I wende to dede was an exception to that rule. These three manuscripts were the Stowe one, which I have been primarily using, and two similar manuscripts; Additional 37049 and Cotton Faustina B.VI. The Stowe manuscript is unique between the three of them in that it is the only one that shows the last verse, the one from the perspective of Death. The Stowe manuscript is currently in the British Library, as is the Cotton Faustina. As far as we know, these three manuscripts are the only examples of a multimedia vado mori, where the text is incorporated with the images.
Analysis of the poem
I wende to dede specifically speaks to how everyone dies and that everyone is equal in death. It moves from the perspective of a knight, to a king, to a clergyman, and finally in the last verse to the perspective of Death. The Stowe manuscript includes this last verse. I chose this version mainly because I find that the last verse summarizes the other three, tying up the uncertainties that those first three present.
In all three manuscripts, the first three stanzas are approximately the same, with only minor variations besides the spelling. For example, Cotton Faustina B. VI uses the letter thorn instead of a TH. These differences, however, hardly make any substantial difference to the poem and its meaning. Not only the meaning of the poem remains the same no matter which version it is, but the meter and rhyme remain the same.
Each of these are attached to a book called the Desert of Religion that speaks of the role of death, both as a concept and a character in England at that time. It shows that death was a very important part of life at the time. The Danse Macabre, fairly well known, was quite prominent during that period as well. Both of these taught that death comes to everyone, no matter of land or titles.
I wende to dede, knight stithe in stoure!
Thurghe fight in felde I wane the flour.
Na fightes me taght the dede to quell:
Wend to dede, soth I you tell.

I wende to dede, a kinge, iwisse!
What helpes honor or werldes blisse?
Dede is to man the kinde way:
I wende to be clade in clay.

I wende to dede, clerk full of skill,
That couth with worde men mare and dill.
Sone has me made the dede an ende:
Bese ware with me! To dede I wende!

Be ghe wele now warr wt me:
My name then is ded.
May ther none fro me fle
That any lyfe gun led.
Kynge Kaser then no knyght,
Ne clerke that can on boke rede,
Beest ne foghel ne other wyght,
Bot I sal make tham dedde.

Rhyme scheme and meter
An analysis of the rhyming scheme illustrates a change in scheme for the final verse. To look at the rhyming scheme of I wende to dede, throughout the first three verses you have the rhyming scheme AABB. Rhyming in this time period was not dependent on how it was written but rather how it sounded, partially because spelling was so inconsistent. In the final verse, that rhyming scheme changes to ABAB. This emphasizes particular pairs of words that underline the meaning of the poem. Some examples show parts of the story of that verse, such as kill/tell in the end of the first stanza, when the knight is telling the reader that they can't kill death. Others follow the undercurrent of the entire poem, such as death/lead, end/go, and way/clay (indicating a coffin).
During the first three verses, each of the first three lines contains approximately 12 syllables, suggesting a poetic form similar to that of the Alexandrine. The final line is 10 syllables. Each line of the final verse is comprised of approximately nine syllables. During that verse, there are three accentuated Figure 2. Engraving from the Ars Moriendi made by Master E.S. around the year 1450Figure 2. Engraving from the Ars Moriendi made by Master E.S. around the year 1450syllables on each line. On each line of the main three verses there are five accents. Below is an example of the accents on each word for the first verse. Beneath that is an example of the accents on the last verse.
Figure 2. Engraving from the Ars Moriendi made by Master E.S. around the year 1450
Figure 2. Engraving from the Ars Moriendi made by Master E.S. around the year 1450
I wénde to déde, kníght stíthe in stóure
Thúrge fíght in félde I wáne the flóure
Na fíghtes me táght the déde to quéll
I wénde to déde, soth Í you téll

Be ghe wéle now wárr wt mé
My náme thén is déde
May ther nóne fróm me flé
That ány lýf gun léde

Imagery
According to Attitudes Towards Death in Middle English Lyrics and Hagiography by Matthias Galler, the knight in the first verse represents physical strength, the king in the second represents the top of the social ladder, and the clergyman in the third human intellect. Death, in the last verse, mentions that anything that has lived a life, he shall at some point make them dead. This is the main point that the three characters are bemoaning, that they all die just the same no matter how happy, competent, or honorable they were in life. This parallels the attitude of the Danse Macabre or Dance of Death, which was the core of the imagery in the Ars Moriendi.
The Ars Moriendi was written in the aftermath of the Black Death which was about sixty years before I wende to dede was written and the book was only printed several years after it was written. It treated on how to live and die well, a concept that was on the minds of many of the survivors in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War that ended not long before the poem was written.
A rough translation of the poem would be:
I go to death, knight stout in battle
Through fighting in field I win the flower
I have been taught no fight that could beat death
And so I tell you I go to death

I go to death, a king I was
What help is honor or worldly bliss
Death is to man the kinder way
I go to be clad in clay

I go to death, clergy full of skill
That familiar with my words men bewilder and conceal
Soon I will end in death
Beware of me, to death I go

Fight me now who would
My name then is Death
May there none from me flee
That ever life has lived
King, courtier, nor no knight
No clerk that can on book read
Beast, nor fowl, nor other man
But I will make them dead.
Performance context
Lyric poetry such as this one was generally performed either read from a book or memorized by noblemen and sometimes jongleurs, though the latter would often memorize the piece orally. The poetry was often performed at feasts, in court by a court poet, or for a person in particular. Most of the time the piece would be accompanied by a vielle, one of the ancestors of the violin. Occasionally the accompanying instrument would be a harp or lute instead of a vielle, especially in England where this piece was written.
Social context
Drawing from the records concerning the poets Chaucer, the Pearl Poet, and their contemporaries, most poets of the time were probably bourgeois. They most likely wrote their poetry at the commission of noble patrons as court poets. John Gower and John Audelay were further examples of this. In terms of the language, Chaucer, living further to the South, had more French influences while the Pearl Poet, living in the North, was more influenced by Germanic languages.
The performers would generally be common minstrels, neither noble nor bourgeois most of the time, travelling to place to place being paid both to perform and to spread the fame of a composer by playing their songs. Occasionally, minstrels or jongleurs of more humble origins could become welcome in the highest of social circles because of their talent, though, providing an uncommon opportunity for social growth to one without even the benefits of the bourgeoisie. In most cases, earning a living from their performances meant noble or bourgeois patronage, especially with poetry as opposed to music.
Pronunciation and language
Middle English was the language of many great English poets, some of the better-known of which were Chaucer and the Pearl Poet. During the time when I wende to dede was written, there was a significant amount of instability to the language. This was both because of rather creative pronunciation and similar spelling.
Great vowel shift
Figure 3: A picture of the poem in the Cotton manuscriptFigure 3: A picture of the poem in the Cotton manuscriptThe Great Vowel Shift began in the 13th century and went on for several centuries after. Some scholars on the subject believe that causes include renewed upward social mobility because of the Black Death or possibly the change in the ruling language from French to English. The Hundred Years' War also provided a source of social and economic turmoil that could have contributed to this shift in pronunciation. Many other Germanic languages were also undergoing vowel shifts, which caused an inherent instability in English. The greatest change during the Great Vowel Shift was in long monothongs. There were seven monothongs, organized by the tongue position when they were pronounced.
Figure 3: A picture of the poem in the Cotton manuscript
Figure 3: A picture of the poem in the Cotton manuscript


Before the Great Vowel Shift, these were:
high front ee (tide)
medium front ee (green)
mid-low front e (meat)
low central aw (maken)
mid-low back ow (goat)
mid-back fowd (food)
high-back oo (hous)

During the Great Vowel Shift, most of these were raised in what is known as a chain shift. However, I wende to dede was written in the earlier part of the Great Vowel Shift, meaning that most of the sounds were still similar to how they were before the vowel shift.
Rules of pronunciation
During the time I wende to dede was written, the Great Vowel Shift was still in full swing. This means that a significant amount of the time, pronunciation from that time period is uncertain, more so in the vowels than in the consonants. Some of this was due to the French influence, as with the fricative variants of V, Z, and TH to separate French loanwords from native English words. Unless stated otherwise, every letter of each syllable was pronounced individually, with the primary exceptions of TH, SH, CH, and GH which were already diphthongs. Also, while many words had a final E, the sound could sometimes be omitted to fit the rhyme, meter, or mood of the phrase. Here are the common differences from Modern English in the pronunciation of consonants.
G = g or j (leg or judge)
F = v in the south, f in the north (vixen or fox)
S = generally ss, occasionally z (bliss or these)
J = interchangeable with I and sometimes Y
NG = both letters pronounced in medial position but not in final position
R = trilled (as in Spanish)
WH = hw
Linguists today theorize that vowels in general were unstable in pronunciation, at that time, especially when followed by an l, m, n, or r. During the Middle English period it became common to write long vowels as two of the vowel. In general, syllables that ended with a vowel tended to be long vowels. Below is a summary of the differences in pronunciation of vowels between modern English and middle English at the time that I wende to dede was written.
Short vowels:
a = ah
e = eh*
I = ih
o = oh
u = oo
Long vowels:
Ay = aah (wand)
Ee = eh or ay (sweat or hay)
Aye = Ee (see)
O = oh (boat)
U = ou (boot)
*e generally sounded like a soft "uh" sound at the end of a word.
However, not all symbols used in writing at the time are still in use today. These would be the handful of special characters that are presented below:
Thorn Þ þ: a phoneme for TH (voiced or unvoiced)
Eth Ð ð: a phoneme for TH (voiced or unvoiced)
Yogh Ȝ ȝ: used like G, J, or GH
Ash Æ æ: a hybrid of A and E sounds
Wynn Ƿ ƿ: used like a W
Phonetic version of the poem
What follows is my "sounds like" phonetic version of the poem. I did not use IPA.
Ee when-duh toe dead-uh
Knicht steethuh een stow-oor
Thoorghuh fight een fellduh Ee wanuh the flowur
Na fightes may taght the deaduh toe quell
Ee whenduh toe deaduh, soth Ee you tell
Ee whenduh toe dede, a kinguh Ee wissuh
What helps honor or werldes bleessuh
Deaduh ees toe manuh the kinduh way
Ee whenduh toe be claduh een clay
Ee whenduh toe deaduh, claerkuh fool of skeel
That cowooth weeth worduh men mareh and deel
Sownuh has me maduh the deaduh an enduh
Baysuh waruh with may, toe deaduh Ee whenduh
Bay ghe welluh now warruh with may
May nameh then ees deaduh
May there nonuh from may flay
That any leaf gun leaduh
Kinguh, kayser, than no knight
Nay clerkuh that can on bowkuh rayduh
Bayst, nay foghool, nay oother wight
Bot Ee shall mawkuh them deaduh
This translation into English pronunciation attempts to follow the earliest rules from the Great Vowel Shift time period.
Appendix 1. Vowel placement
The following schema illustrates the shifting placement of vowels in the mouth during the Great Vowel Shift.




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