[In the following essay, Lyall argues that the fifteenth-century Scots poem The Thre Prestis of Peblis, was not influenced by the Gesta Romanorum, as crtiics who interpret it as a harbinger of humanism, rather than an echo of medievalism, have argued.]

The fifteenth-century Scots poem The Thre Prestis of Peblis¹ is a composite of three linked tales, involving no less than seven narrative elements. The first, the basic narrative framework, concerns the carousing of the priests and their decision to rival one another in story-telling. The tale of Master John, ‘of þe thre questionis’, is a straightforward account of a king's attempt to discover the cause of the failings of his three Estates, and of the replies of their three spokesmen. Master Archibald's tale, the second of the sequence, is a good deal more complex, echoing in its tripartite structure the pattern of the poem as a whole: the link in this case is the character of Fictus, the wise fool, who exposes the vices of a king through three incidents. These are the story of a wounded man who rebukes the king for brushing flies away from his wounds, that of a murderer who when pardoned repeats his crime, and that of the impersonation by the queen of the king's chosen mistress. The tale of the third priest, Sir William, while it repeats the tripartite structure which is the basis of The Thre Prestis, resembles Master John's tale in having only a single narrative line, the story of a man compelled to undertake a journey and attempting to find a friend to accompany him. The poem thus combines a wide variety of narrative motifs, evidently drawn from a variety of sources.

In the past, there has been a certain amount of critical interest in the poet's sources for these stories, not only out of editorial tidiness but also because the study of sources helps to define the cultural background within which the poem must be placed. T. D. Robb, its most recent editor, for example, finds parallels for the over-all linking device in both the Middle Scots Buke of the Sewyn Sagis (itself the representative of a widespread European tradition) and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and further suggests that the source for the tale of the wounded man and the flies is probably one of the exempla in the Gesta Romanorum. He gives no source for the second episode of Master Archibald's tale, that of the pardoned murderer, but the episode of the wife who impersonates her husband's mistress is linked by Robb with the story of Giletta di Nerbona in Boccaccio's Il Decamerone. He stops short of positively envisaging an Italian-reading poet, however, observing that ‘what version the Scottish poet knew cannot be determined. …’² Robb is similarly cautious about the immediate source of Sir William's tale of the three friends, although Everyman is an obvious analogue. The Scots version appeared to him to contain elements of both the widely circulated analogue of Everyman in the Historia de Barlaam et Josaphat and some descendant of another version of the story in the Talmud. Again, no single version appeared to contain all the features of the story as told by Sir William, but Robb concluded

that there was in all probability another expanded version which preserved certain details of the ancient Jewish parable; and that, since these details appear in our poem, this, and not ‘Barlaam’ and certainly not ‘Everyman’ was in all likelihood the immediate source of the Third Tale.³

For the linking device of Fictus the fool, as for the episode of the pardoned murderer, Robb was unable to suggest a source.

The problem of sources has been dealt with more recently by R. D. S. Jack, who makes much of the Italian influence upon the Scots poet. He accepts Robb's suggestion that the story of the wounded man and the flies comes from the Gesta Romanorum, but adds that Sir William's tale of the three friends is derived from the same source.⁴ For Dr Jack there is also no doubt about the original of Master Archibald's story of the wife who tricks her unfaithful husband:

It is clear that the poet had read Il Decamerone, probably in the original, but possibly in a French translation, for Maister Archebald's last tale is, in essence, that of Giletta di Nerbona … Master Archibald's tale is recognizably based on Boccaccio rather than any of the other similar works advanced by Lee, including Terence's Hecyra or Le Chevalereux Comte d'Artois.⁵

He also raises the possibility that the linking device of Master Archibald's tale, the character of the wise fool, may have an Italian source, in Franco Sacchetti's Il Trecentonovelle.⁶ In view of his clear familiarity with Boccaccio, Dr Jack further suggests, it is likely that the over-all narrative framework of tale-telling was suggested to the author of The Thre Prestis by Boccaccio rather than by Chaucer. Only two of the narrative elements remain unexplained in this account: Master John's tale of the king and his Estates (which Dr Jack says is ‘almost entirely original’), and Master Archibald's episode of the pardoned murderer. The majority of the above suggestions are repeated by Dr Jack in his more recent article on The Thre Prestis, where the presumed influence of Boccaccio, the Gesta Romanorum, and perhaps Sacchetti is employed to support a wider argument about the cultural context of the Scots poem:

… it is evident that the author of The Thre Prestis has profited from a number of works, which in one way or another can be associated with Italy or with humanism generally. Like Henryson and Douglas he is part of the new humanist movement in literature, which characterized the early Renaissance in Scotland.⁷

The present article is intended to provide a re-examination of the probable sources of The Thre Prestis, with some reference to the broader questions of cultural significance raised by Dr Jack.

It seems unlikely that a source for Master John's tale will ever be identified. Its origins are perhaps in folk-tale, where the formula of question and answer is frequently used as the basis for simple narrative. The structure here derives from the triple structure of the medieval Scots parliament, and the development of the tale reveals the education of a well-meaning but initially ignorant king by the spokesmen of his three Estates. The didacticism is reinforced by the way in which the questions are first stated in turn and then repeated as the king circulates among the Estates to receive the replies. It is possible that this elementary narrative form was derived from an exemplum not hitherto discovered, but it seems equally probable that it is the Scots poet's own invention.

Master Archibald's tale is quite different, both in its greater narrative complexity and in the poet's reliance upon specific (and theoretically identifiable) sources for his plots. Within the whole framework of the story of Fictus the fool (established in ll. 451-98) are set the three main episodes, of the wounded man and the flies (ll. 499-634), of the pardoned murderer (ll. 651-788), and of the disguised queen (ll. 815-1004): each episode is told at some length and with a considerable degree of narrative development, at least by the standards of the medieval exemplum. It is not surprising, then, that the Scots poet generally appears to have expanded his sources, and that therefore the correspondence between his version of a tale and that of any supposed source is unlikely to be exact. That said, it is nevertheless desirable to ensure that there is no other medieval version of each element which is closer to that in The Thre Prestis than those already suggested. Master Archibald's story of the wounded man and the flies is a case in point. In his account, the wounded man is first encountered by the roadside by Fictus the fool and several companions, one of whom attempts to brush the flies away from his wounds. Fictus explains that this will cause the man more suffering, since the sated flies will be replaced by those more hungry. This exchange is then repeated when the king arrives, after a short dialogue in which the wounded man blames the king for his wounds on the grounds that the failure of justice encourages wrong-doing. When the king tries to brush the flies off his wounds, the wounded man observes that

Your fule, sir King, hes mair with than ȝe haue;
And weil I ken be his phisnomie
He hes mair wit nor al ȝour cumpanie.

(556-8)

The allegorical connection between the flies of the narrative and corrupt courtiers, it should be noted, is never directly spelled out by the narrator, although it is implied in the king's subsequent self-examination.

This version of the story, with its repetition of plot and its ironic juxtaposition of fool's wisdom and king's folly, is clearly a fairly highly developed narrative. It contrasts rather obviously with its suggested source, an exemplum from the Gesta Romanorum:

Refert Josephus, quod Tiberius Cesar requisitus, cur provinciarum presides diu teneret in officiis, respondit per exemplum: Vidi, inquit, quandoque hominem infirmum ulceribus plenum muscis gravatum, cui cum per flagella expellerem, dixit michi: Dupliciter me crucias, unde me consolari putas, abigendo muscas sanguine me plenas et remittendo vacuas et famelicas. Quis enim dubitet aculeum musce famelice dupliciter affligere magis quam plene, nisi ille, qui cor lapideum habet et non carneum.

Sic ego presides diu in officio teneo, qui rebus ditati subditis magis parcant, novi autem et vacui deserta justicia subditos iniquis exactionibus et vexationibus magis ledunt.⁸

It is instructive to compare this text with its own announced source, Josephus' Antiquitates judaicae, which was presumably available to the compiler of the Gesta in the Latin translation attributed in the Middle Ages to Rufinus of Aquileia:⁹

Exemplum etiam eis proferebat quendam uulneratum: ad cuius uulnus muscae congregabantur plurimae. Quem quidam transeuntium cum uidisset: miseratus est eius calamitatem: ratusque quod imbecillitate nimia muscas illas a se non posset abiicere: & opus haberet alterius beneficio: interrogauit eum causam cur sibimet ipse non auxiliaretur: molestiam repellendo muscarum. Cui ille respondens amplius inquit mihi lesionis importas: si has praesentes fugaueris. Istae quidem iam repletae sanguine: non eo meo molestae sunt: quin etiam aliquantulum remissius insistunt: si uero his amotis aliae famelicae congregentur: ita illud uulnus inuadunt: ut etiam si intereant: non ualeant effugari. Propterea igitur & seipsum dicebat subiectis per rapinas iudicum fatigatis consulere: per hoc quod non crebro in administrationibus alios substitueret: qui more muscarum cum naturaliter ad lucra referentur tum etiam remotionis timore: amplius incitarentur ad rapiendi cupidinem.¹⁰

As a third example of the various medieval versions of this popular tale, it is perhaps worth quoting John Bromyard's widely disseminated preachers' handbook, Summa predicantium:

Quod exemplo ostendit cuiusdam vulnerati, qui cum iaceret in via, & non amoueret multitudinem muscarum a vulnere: superueniens alter putabat, quod hoc omitteret ex imbecillitate, & abegit muscas, quae operuerant vulnus eius. Ad quem ille, Male fecisti mihi, quia muscae, quas amouisti, iam plenae erant sanguine, & parcius me molestabant, quae autem superueniant recentes, acrius me pungent. Sic & procuratores, vel officiales, & ministri quicunque recenter substituti, acrius in subditos deseuiunt.¹¹

One or two conclusions may immediately be drawn from this evidence. First, it is clear that none of the extant Latin versions (of which the above are typical) approaches the Scots poem in structure or in narrative detail. It is also apparent that notwithstanding certain differences, the Latin texts have a great deal in common. It is furthermore obvious that there is very little evidence to support the view that the Gesta Romanorum and only the Gesta Romanorum could have been the source of the first part of Master Archibald's tale. On the contrary, there are a few indications that the Scots poet's source may have been more like the Latin Josephus or the Summa predicantium. Both these versions, for instance, have a roadside setting (transeuntium, in via), whereas no location is clearly implied in the Gesta version. Similarly, the victim is described by both Josephus' translator and Bromyard as vulneratus, while he is less specifically introduced in the Gesta Romanorum as homo infirmus. In both these respects, the two former texts are quite closely resembled by The Thre Prestis, in which as Fictus precedes the king

Sa be the way ane woundit man fande he …

(505)

The doubling of the plot in the Scottish poem makes other comparisons difficult, but it is worth noting that in both phases of the story an attempt is made, first by a courtier and later by the king, actually to brush away the flies which infest the injured man's wounds. Only in the Gesta and in Bromyard of the Latin texts does this occur: in the Latin version of Josephus the passer-by merely asks why the victim himself does not chase the insects away. Given the Scots poet's apparent development of his source into a more complex narrative pattern, it seems unlikely that any single source will be found for this story. It seems, however, that the balance of probabilities is against rather than in favour of the Gesta Romanorum, and that a more probable source is a version like that in Bromyard's Summa predicantium, or possibly the Latin Josephus.

It is possible to be more specific about the source of Master Archibald's second story, that of the twice-pardoned murderer. It has not previously been noticed that this section of The Thre Prestis very closely parallels an exemplum in Hoccleve's Regement of Princes (c.1412). Again the Scots poet appears to have expanded his original, so that whereas the murderer in the English poem is executed after his second offence, in the Scottish work he is pardoned a second time and then commits a third murder. The narrative is also organized on somewhat different lines. Hoccleve, for example, passes quickly over the first crime:

Kyng of þis lond whilom, herde I seyn,
          For mannes deth a pardoun hadde e-graunted
Vnto a man, whiche afterward ageyn
          The same gilt hadde in an othir haunted.

(3123-6)¹²

After the second murder, the criminal reflects on the influential friends who will secure his release:

‘Of frendes,’ quod he, ‘naue I large wone,
          That, for þat they haue had, and schul, of myne,
Byforne þe kyng for me schal knele echone;
          They at þe fulle kunne his herte myne;
Thider wil I goo, streght as any lyne,
          And þey þat now annoyen me or greue,
          I schal hem qwite here-aftir, as I leue.’

(3130-6)

The Scots poet approaches the same material in a different manner, giving a more detailed account of the consequences of both the murderer's earlier crimes, and showing the operation of influence (compounded here by bribery) rather than introducing it indirectly through the murderer's soliloquy:

Syne efter this ane Gentleman percace
Had slain ane man al throw his raklesnes,
And to the Court he come and tald this thing
Vnto ane man was inward with the King,
And said: ‘Sir, lo I am in the Kings grace,
That hes ane man slane in my fault, allace;
And wil ȝe gar the King to that consent,
For it I sal ȝow pay and content.’
This Courteour held on to this to the king
And tald him al this tail to the ending;
And than the king for his lufe and instance
Bad bring the man that happened that mischance.

(651-62)

This process of expansion extends to the whole of the Scots version, the 158 lines of which correspond to a mere sixty-two lines of The Regement of Princes: while the introduction of a third murder partly explains this greater length, it is also true that the author of The Thre Prestis tells the whole story in more detail than Hoccleve does.

One or two aspects of the comparison nevertheless suggest that the Regement is probably the source rather than just an analogue of this part of The Thre Prestis. The most obvious is perhaps the presence in the Regement story of a wise fool:

          Now stood a foole sage þe kyng byside;
And or þe kyng spak any wordes moo,
          He to hym seide: ‘Now, for god þat dyde,
          Whi demen ye þis man an homicide?
          He slow hym naght, for ye your self hym slow,
          And, by your leuen, I schal tellen how …’

(3144-50)

It seems very probable that this function of the ‘foole sage’ as reliable counsellor, which so exactly parallels that of Fictus in The Thre Prestis, provided the source not only of the middle section of Master Archibald's tale but also of the linking narrative device of the wise courtier disguised as a fool which underlies the whole of the tale. Heroes disguised as fools are, it is true, found elsewhere in medieval literature, but in view of the close parallel between this part of Archibald's tale and Hoccleve's Regement, it is not unlikely that the English poem provided the idea of the Fictus character. The specific parallel is apparent, moreover, not only in the character of the fool but even in the arguments he uses:

With that vpon ane lytil bony stule
Sat Fictus, that was the Kings fule,
And said, ‘Now and ȝe gar not heid or hang
This man, for them that he slew, it war wrang.
The first man weil I grant he slew,
The vther twa in faith them slew ȝow.
Had thow him puneist quhan he slew the first,
The vther twa had bene leuand I wist;
Thairfoir, allace, this tail, sir, is ouer trew,
For in gude faith, the last twa men ȝe slew.’

(743-52)

The words here are very close to those of l. 3149 of the Regement, so close indeed that it can hardly be doubted that Hoccleve's poem was the source of at least the story of the pardoned murderer. The wider argument, that the structure of Master Archibald's tale as a whole may have been influenced by the Regement version of that story, is perhaps strengthened by the fact that the fool's argument of royal responsibility also crops up in the Scots version of the story of the wounded man and the flies, where the victim holds the king responsible for his wounds:

                              ‘I have sik sturt,
For baith with theif and reuer I am hurt.
And ȝit, suppois, I haue all the pyne,
The falt is ȝowris, sir King, and nathing myne;
For and with ȝow gude counsal war ay chief,
Than wald ȝe stanche weill baith reuer and theif …’

(539-44)

Whereas there are problems with the story of the flies because it is so widespread, there are no other analogues for Archibald's story of the multiple murderer. It is not listed by Thompson,¹³ by Herbert,¹⁴ or by Tubach.¹⁵ Hoccleve appears to have drawn his exempla almost exclusively from the De ludo scaccorum of Jacobus de Cessolis, but this tale is one of only a couple of exceptions.¹⁶ Aster suggested that it was taken ‘aus der Geschichte seiner Zeit und seines Landes’, but there is no evidence to support this conjecture.¹⁷ The question of Hoccleve's source is, in any case, somewhat beside the point: the verbal parallels seem sufficiently strong to justify the assertion that the Scottish poet most probably adapted the story directly from Hoccleve.

As for the third of Archibald's stories, that of the disguised queen, there seems to be no reason to dispute the proposition of Robb and Jack that it is based on a similar tale in the Decameron.¹⁸ It is less clear that the poet had read the Italian original. Il Decamerone had been translated into French by Laurent de Premierfait about 1411-12, and his version survives in at least sixteen fifteenth-century manuscripts. The first printed edition appeared in Paris in 1485.¹⁹ Since Premierfait's translation stays close to its original, and since the Thre Prestis version is in any case a free adaptation, there is unlikely to be any textual evidence to tip the balance in favour of an Italian or a French source. It is perhaps not an important point, but at any rate the onus of proof ought to be upon those who would identify an Italian-reading poet in Scotland at this period. The only other evidence adduced by Dr Jack is a possible link with Sacchetti's Trecentonovelle, which is at best tenuous and which is superfluous if the linking device of the wise fool was, as I have suggested, inspired by the more accessible Regement of Princes.

While the narrative structure of the last tale, Sir William's, is relatively straightforward, the question of analogues is again quite complicated. The story of the three (or four) friends is one of the most popular of medieval exempla, and occurs in many sermons as well as in most of the exemplum-collections. The many variants are broadly classifiable, on the basis of their moralitates, into five groups:

1. (Four friends) in which three of the friends symbolize the World, amici carnales (that is, the Flesh), and the Devil, while the fourth friend is Christ;
2. (Three friends), riches (or the World), family and friends (or the Flesh), and the Devil, without any intervention by Christ;
3. (Three friends), the World, the Flesh, and Christ;
4. (Three friends), the World, the Flesh, and almsgiving; and
5. (Three friends), Justice, Truth, and Mercy (a curious blend of this story with the allegory of the Four Daughters of God, which occurs, apparently uniquely, in a sermon in MS Royal 18.B.xxiii.²⁰

It is quite clear that the basis of the version in The Three Prestis is of the fourth type, since the third friend is interpreted by Sir William as

Nocht ellis bot Almost deid and cheritie,

(1310)

while the other two are ‘gude penny and pelfe’ and ‘wyfe and barne and vther friends all’. It is therefore possible to eliminate a number of versions of the story as direct sources for the Scots poem, since they adopt different allegorizations of the three friends: Bromyard's Summa predicantium (in which two versions occur, both different from the allegory in The Thre Prestis) and the various versions of the Gesta Romanorum are among those works which can safely be ruled out.²¹ This last point was implicitly recognized by Robb, but not by Dr Jack, who, as we have noted above, states that the Gesta version was the Scots poet's source.

I have so far located four medieval texts which employ the same allegorical interpretation as that in The Thre Prestis: the Latin translation of the History of Barlaam and Josaphat, and three of its derivatives, Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale (which follows its original very closely), Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea, and an anonymous exemplum collection in MS Harley 1288. As we have seen in considering Master Archibald's Tale, the Scots poet's tendency to expand his sources makes the isolation of one particular text as the immediate source somewhat difficult, but again in the case of the story of the three friends there are a few clues which may at least point us in the right direction. Robb, comparing The Thre Prestis with the version in Vincent's Speculum historiale, noted one or two significant differences and suggested that the explanation might lie in some unknown expansion of a similar story found in the Talmud. But he was apparently unaware of the Legenda aurea version, which is in some respects the closest analogue of the Scots poem. One feature of The Thre Prestis not found in Vincent is the offer of the second friend (later allegorized as the protagonist's family) to accompany the protagonist as far as the gates of the king's palace:

Bot a thing is to say in termes short,
With ȝow my friend I will ga to the port.
Trust weil of me na mair of myne ȝe get,
Fra ȝe be anis in at the kings ȝet.

(1129-32)

In both the Latin Barlaam and Vincent, the second friend offers only to go ‘a little way’ (modicum tamen tecum pergam),²² but in the Legenda aurea this is expanded to Modicum tamen vsque ad ostium palatij te sociabor (translated by Caxton in his English version, printed in 1483, as ‘but I shal yet felawshyp the vnto the gate of the paleys’).²³ It is perhaps as a result of the influence of the Legenda that the Harley version reads:

Petiit postea secundum amicum qui concessit secum venire vsque ad portam regis & non vlterius.²⁴

The phrasing in these latter examples is certainly closer to the version in The Thre Prestis than either the Latin Barlaam or Vincent of Beauvais.

The conclusion suggested by this evidence is supported by at least one other detail. Vincent, closely following the Latin Barlaam, introduces the three friends as follows:

… tres amicos habuit, quorum quidem duos precordialiter et affectuose honorabat, ac uehementer eorum afficiebatur et usque ad mortem pro ipsis agonizans et periclitari desiderans. Aduersus tercium multo ferebatur despectu, neque honore neque decenti eum aliquando gratificans dilectione, nisi quondam modicam ad eum similans amiciciam.²⁵

This pattern, in which the scorn with which the third friend is regarded is simply contrasted with the protagonist's attachment to the other two, is varied by Jacobus de Voragine:

… tres amicos habuit, quorum vnum plus quam se, secundum tantum quantum se, tercium minus quam se et quasi nichil dilexit.

Again, MS Harley 1288 is closer to the Legenda aurea:

… fecit sibi tres amicos, vnius scilicet quem super se deligebat, alius quem sicut seipsum, tercium vero quem minus se diligebat.

And again, it is clear that the Scots poet was using a source of the Legenda aurea type:

This man that we speik of had freinds thrie,
And lufit them nocht in ane degrie.
The first freind, quhil he was laid in delf,
He lufit ay far better than him self.
The nixt freind than als weil luifit he
As he him self luifit in al degrie.
The thrid freind he luifit this and swa
In na degrie like to the other twa.

(1017-24)

In some respects, it may be noted, the version in MS Harley 1288 is further away from The Thre Prestis than is the Legenda aurea, and such a text, found apparently only in one isolated manuscript, is not in itself a probable source for the Scots poem. Yet in its moralitas, the Harley version is actually closer to Sir William's Tale than any of the other analogues. Most versions give an interpretation only of the three friends, although other pieces of interpretation are sometimes implied. The Harley MS, however, is more specific:

Per regem sapientissimum intelligitur Iesus, qui sapientissimus est et iustus omnium creaturarum. Per filiam ipsius intelligitur anima que est ex nihilo ab ipso creata et multum dilecta. Per seruum regis qui habuit filiam in custodia, intelligitur homo qui natus est ad seruandum regum & Christum.

The details of this interpretation differ from those in The Thre Prestis, where the king who summons the protagonist is ‘God that is of michts maist’ (1241), his officer, the instrument of the summons, is Deid (1245), and the protagonist himself is

                                                                                          baith thow and he
And al that in the warld is that mon die,

(1261-2)²⁶

but the general similarity of approach is striking, and may imply another derivative of the Legenda aurea version in which some such elaboration was to be found. On the other hand, there is no reason why the Scots poet should not have taken his account straight from the Legenda, and developed the moralitas himself. There are within Jacobus' moralitas, indeed, clear suggestions of all three interpretations introduced in The Thre Prestis. The personification of the messenger as Deid seems to be anticipated by the statement in Jacobus' moralitas ‘Veniente vero mortis termino …’, while the promise that the good works symbolized by the third friend

nos cum de corpore eximus possunt precedere & pro nobis apud deum interuenire

clearly implies that the king is indeed God. The whole tenor of the moralitas is to suggest such correspondences, and the identification of the protagonist as Everyman, while it is not explicitly stated, is obviously implied throughout. It must be conceded that all three interpretations are equally suggested, in very similar language, in the version of Vincent of Beauvais, and doubtless in other versions also. But the point is that they are inherent in the exemplum and its moralitas, and we hardly need to seek a specific source for such a natural elaboration by a Scots poet whose tendency appears in any case to be towards the expansion of his material. All the evidence seems to point towards the Legenda aurea, or some derivative of it, as the immediate source of Sir William's Tale.

Summing up, then, we can suggest a list of probable sources for The Thre Prestis of Peblis which is rather different from those proposed by Robb and Jack. No source for Master John's Tale has yet emerged, but its narrative structure is such a straightforward elaboration of the question-and-answer technique of folk-tale that it is perhaps fruitless to seek one. For the complex tale of Master Archibald, the sources were most probably one or more exemplarium versions of the story of the wounded man and the flies (but almost certainly not the Gesta Romanorum), Hoccleve's Regement of Princes, and some text of the Decameron, quite possibly in Laurent de Premierfait's French translation. Sir William's Tale appears to have been derived from the Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, or from some derivative of it. Robb's suggestion that this latter tale may owe something to an unknown elaboration of a very brief version of the story in the Talmud, made in order to explain two details of the Scots text not found in the Latin Barlaam, is rendered unnecessary by the discovery of the closer analogue of the Legenda aurea, and by the evident willingness of the poet to add to his sources.

The implications of the list of sources thus established are considerable. Its emphasis is, in particular, evidently quite different from that of Dr Jack's list, with its humanist and quasi-humanist works. There seems to be no good reason for supposing that the author of The Thre Prestis read Italian, or that he was familiar with Continental humanist writers: even the Decameron, while its author was certainly influenced by early humanist ideas, has much in common with other medieval narrative collections.²⁷ The Scots poet's reading, so far as we can tell from his work, consisted principally of collections of pious tales and works of moral instruction.

It appears to me that this conclusion is consistent with the nature of the poem itself. In arguing for a substantial humanist influence in The Thre Prestis, Dr Jack concedes that the secular, ‘humanist’ concerns of the first two tales are controverted by Sir William's more spiritual approach. As Dr Jack quite rightly emphasizes, John and Archibald are both university men and much travelled, while William begins by confessing the inadequacy of his learning:

                                                            ‘Thocht I be of ȝow thrie
The febillest and leist of literature,
Yit than, with all my deligence and cure
To tell ane tail now, sik ane as I haue,
Of me methink ȝe sould na vther craue.’

(1008-12)

We should beware such a use of excusatio, seeking as it does to disarm our criticism. Dr Jack is surely right that ‘the highest truths of the collection are being put into the mouth of the most modest and perhaps the least talented priest’,²⁸ although we are perhaps not intended to accept Sir William's modest assessment of his own abilities quite so much at face value. But if the divine perspective of his Tale is so carefully made to transcend the secular vision of his more learned colleagues, we must be equally careful to avoid exaggerating the importance attached by the poet to secular concerns.

This is not, of course, to deny the contribution made to The Thre Prestis by the first two tales. Not only do they offer a vision of a fallen world to which the ultimate answers are those expounded by Sir William in his allegory, but they also offer more limited, secular correctives for the ills of society. What is less clear is that the arguments here presented are in any substantial way influenced by humanist thought. The theme of the interdependence of the elements of society is expressed in Master John's Tale through the time-honoured metaphor of the body politic:

Ane hed dow nocht on body stand allane,
Forowt memberis to be of mycht and mane
For to wphald þe body & þe hed
And sekerly to gar i stand in steid.

(105-8)

This cliché of medieval political thought²⁹ is in no sense distinctively humanist, and neither are the themes of Master Archibald's Tale, the dangers of unwise counsel, the importance of the proper administration of justice, and the implications for the whole state of a prince's personal morality. As I have argued elsewhere, The Thre Prestis of Peblis is part of a well-established Middle Scots genre of political advice poetry, distinguished neither by originality of political thought nor by specific reference to topical events.³⁰ It has more in common with Hoccleve's Regement of Princes than a single exemplum and the character of a wise fool: both are instances of the genre of Mirrors for Princes which were so popular in the later Middle Ages and which continued throughout the sixteenth century. I am, therefore, disinclined to see in the tales of John and Archibald an anticipation of future trends, defeated here but ultimately to triumph. The political wisdom which they expound is no less conventional than the more spiritual moralitas of the final tale, and both dimensions are part of a comprehensive view of the nature and ends of human life which was in large measure the common property of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. But so far as his sources allow us to judge, the author of The Thre Prestis of Peblis was firmly rooted in the mainstream of medieval literature, closer to Langland and to Hoccleve than to Erasmus and Thomas More.

Notes

1. The Thre Prestis of Peblis, ed. T. D. Robb (STS, Edinburgh, 1920). All quotations are from this edition: where possible (i.e. for ll. 1-359) I have used the imperfect Asloan text, thereafter the later Charteris printed version.

2. The Thre Prestis of Peblis, ed. cit., p. xxvi.

3. Ibid., p. xxxii.

4. R. D. S. Jack, The Italian Influence on Scottish Literature (Edinburgh, 1972), pp. 18-19.

5. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

6. Ibid., p. 19.

7. R. D. S. Jack, ‘The Thre Prestis of Peblis and the Growth of Humanism in Scotland’, RES [Review of English Studies] NS xxvi (1975), 257-70, at p. 259.

8. Gesta Romanorum, ed. H. Oesterley (Berlin, 1872), pp. 348-9.

9. On this attribution see Tyranni Rufini Opera, ed. M. Simonetti (CCSL, Turnhout 1961- ), I. ix. The translation was attributed to Rufinus in manuscripts and early printed editions.

10. Antiquitates judaicae (Venice, J. Rubeus Vercellensis, 1486), sig. u i^v.

11. John Bromyard, Summa predicantium (Antwerp, G. Strutherus, 1614), ii, fol. 29.

12. Quotations from the Regement of Princes are from the edition of F. J. Furnivall (EETS [Early English Text Society], London, 1897): ll. 3123-64 are on pp. 113-14.

13. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Copenhagen, 2nd edn., 1955-8).

14. J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. iii (London, 1910).

15. Frederic C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (FF Communications 204, Helsinki, 1969).

16. J. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic (Urbana, Ill., 1968), pp. 24-7.

17. F. Aster, Das Verhältnis des altenglischen Gedichtes ‘De Regimine Principum’ von Thomas Hoccleve zu seinen Quellen nebst einer Einleitung über Leben und Werke des Dichters (Diss., Leipzig, 1888), p. 50.

18. Analogues to Boccaccio's tale are considered by A. C. Lee, The Decameron: Its Sources and Analogues (New York, 1909), pp. 101-8, but none seems particularly close to the Scots poem.

19. Cf. Patricia M. Gathercole, ‘Boccaccio in French’, Studi sul Boccaccio, V (1968), 275-97.

20. Middle English Sermons, ed. W. O. Ross (EETS, London, 1940), pp. 43-5.

21. Bromyard's two versions are of the first and second types (A.21.5, A.21.7, sb. ‘Amicitia’), while the principal version in the Gesta Romanorum is of the third type (ed. Oesterley, pp. 483-4).

22. Liber gestorum barlaam et iosophat (Strasbourg, H. Eggesteyn, [?1475]), fol. 47^r; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale (Strasbourg, J. Mentellin 1473), ii, fol. 185^r.

23. The golden legende (Westminster, W. Caxton, 1483), fol. 407^r.

24. BL, MS Harley 1288, fol. 54^v.

25. Speculum historiale, ed. cit. ii, fol. 185^r.

26. There is perhaps a trace of textual corruption in l. 1261. It is far from clear to whom the pronoun ‘he’ refers: surely not to the protagonist himself, perhaps to some notional other member of the audience. An emendation to ‘I’ (or even ‘me’) would give a clearer sense.

27. Cf. Vittore Branca, Boccaccio Medievale (Florence, 1948), pp. 3-28.

28. Jack, art. cit., 269.

29. Some medieval occurrences are cited by Otto van Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, trans. F. W. Maitland (Cambridge, 1900), pp. 129-36. Cf. in particular John of Salisbury, Policraticus, v. 2; vi. 20, ed. C. C. J. Webb (Oxford, 1909), i. 283; ii. 58-9; Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones quodlibetales, vii, q. vii, a. 1, ed. R. Spiazzi (Turin, 1956), p. 150; and, for a vernacular English example, John Lydgate, Fall of Princes, ii. 806-917, ed. Henry Bergen (EETS, London, 1924-7), i. 221-5.

30. R. J. Lyall, ‘Politics and Poetry in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Scotland’, SLJ [Scottish Literary Journal], iii, 2 (Dec. 1976), 5-29, at pp. 11-13.