Following a complex 10-line stanzaic rhyme scheme, this five-stanza lyric on death appears beside music in one of its five manuscripts, so it evidently circulated as a song. Given its “rather grisly character” (Reese, Music in the Middle Ages, p. 242), the mood it conveys is one of misery: each stanza’s seventh line opens with the woeful exclamation “Wailaway!” Many lines call directly to “Mon,” chiding him for how oblivious he is to death. The listener or congregant singer is reminded to be prepared for death’s unlooked-for, inauspicious, sudden appearance. Death in personified form enters stealthily in four stanzas, offering its potion, striking a violent blow, lurking in one’s shoe, and tossing one down from a height. In the final stanza, it is the World that deceives a man and keeps him unprepared for death. As in many other Jesus 29 lyrics, Solomon is named as a wise authority, here on the subject of death (line 21).

In Jesus 29 and Cotton Caligula A.ix, Death’s Wither-Clench precedes An Orison to Our Lady (art. 8). Dobson and Harrison have noted, interestingly, that both poems can be sung to the same music, which they provide from the Maidstone MS (Medieval English Songs, pp. 131, 243). It seems very likely, therefore, that the medieval audience of Jesus and Cotton would have recognized these lyrics as paired songs. The two poems may in fact be contrafacta, that is, one a transformation of the subject matter and style of the other. The direction for this activity was usually secular to religious, which would suggest, in this case, that Death’s Wither-Clench is the somewhat older poem (and that it was viewed as more generally admonitive than religious). This possibility makes it all the more fascinating that An Orison to Our Lady retains intimations of death in its tones of Marian worship.

Death’s Wither-Clench appears often in anthologies of Middle English verse, sometimes under the title Long Life and sometimes under the first line Man may longe lives weene. Titles have varied because the word wither-clench, “counter-grip” (line 12) appears in only two versions of the poem (Maidstone and Laud), while Jesus and Cotton bear the word wither-blench, “counter-trick.” But an unfixed title creates the false impression that the two poems are different, while in fact they are the same one: a lyric mourning Death’s cold grip and strategic tricks, sung to a tune that survives. By naming the Jesus/Cotton song Death’s Wither-Clench, I seek here to standardize the title by selecting the one of most color and familiarity. In the bibliographical summary given below, I provide only a select listing of editions based on manuscripts other than Jesus 29. For a fuller overview, see DIMEV 3370. Three of the four other versions of Death’s Wither-Clench may be viewed by digital facsimile. For MS Cotton Caligula A.ix, see http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Caligula_A_IX(Opens in a new tab or window); for MS Laud Misc. 471, see https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_7274(Opens in a new tab or window); and for MS Arundel 57 (stanza 1 only), see http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Arundel_MS_57(Opens in a new tab or window).

[Fols. 179v–180v. NIMEV 2070. DIMEV 3370. Louis, MWME, 9:3022, 3389 [280]. Quires: 3–4. Meter: 50 lines in five 10-line stanzas, rhyming ababbaabbb4 (usually). Layout: Short lines in a single column, each with end punctuation. The scribe sometimes writes two verse lines on one manuscript line. Editions from MS Jesus 29: Morris, pp. 157–59; Hall, 1:29, 2:308–12. Four other MSS: London BL, MS Arundel 57, fol. 51v (Michel, Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, pp. 129–30; stanza 1 only); London, BL, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix, fol. 246r (Morris, pp. 156–58); Maidstone, Kent, Maidstone Museum, MS A.13, fol. 93v (Brown, pp. 15–16, 170–71); Oxford, BodL, MS Laud Misc. 471, fol. 65r (Brown, pp. 17–18, 170–71). Critical edition with music: Dobson and Harrison, eds., Medieval English Songs, pp. 122–30, 242, 298. Translation: Dobson and Harrison, eds., Medieval English Songs, p. 324.]