The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo or The Tretis Of The Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo ('The conversation of the two married women and the widow') is a narrative poem in Scots by the makar William Dunbar.
The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo or The Tretis Of The Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo ('The conversation of the two married women and the widow') is a narrative poem in Scots by the makar William Dunbar.
The poem dates to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries and is written in the archaic form of alliterative verse rather than the rhyming verse more typical of Scots poetry of the time.
It survives in The Chepman and Myllar Prints of 1508, held in the National Library of Scotland and, as a fragment, in the Maitland Manuscripts, held in the Pepys Library. [1] It is also now available online archive of medieval texts in an annotated version (see External Links below).
The poem describes an unnamed narrator's overhearing of a discussion between three women in a garden. The women speak frankly and at length of marriage and their experiences with their husbands. The discussion of sexuality is often in language which is earthy and uninhibited. [2] The work ends with the narrator asking the reader,
or, in English,
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The narrator is walking alone in the country on a Midsummer night admiring the beauty of nature,
In a hedged garden he notices three women,
He eavesdrops on their conversation, hoping for amusement. One of the women, a widow, asks her two younger, married companions about their opinion of marriage,
The first wife responds by telling the others about her unhappy marriage to an older, unattractive man.
She adds that while he is a poor lover, he is also wealthy and generous.
The second wife speaks next and tells the others that her husband is young but also lacking as a lover due to a lecherous past.
He is vain and boasting.
She adds that she would like a new lover,
The widow speaks next. She begins by advising her friends to emulate her behaviour of adopting a gentle persona while remaining secretly ruthless.
She summarises this approach as,
She reveals that she has been married twice. Her first husband, like that of the first wife, was an older man.
She meanwhile had a younger lover,
She gave birth to a son, but confides that her husband was impotent by the time of his conception. She persuaded him to bequeath his property to the boy.
Her second marriage was to a wealthy merchant, whom she considered to be socially inferior.
She intimidated the man with constant reminders of his supposedly low birth.
He is persuaded by her intimidation to will his property to her son.
She continued to dominate her husband, whom she refers to as 'wife',
She obtained valuable possessions from him,
She then promoted her own children while denigrating her husband's children.
She didn't mourn his death.
Once widowed, she adopted traditional mourning customs, insincerely.
She took a secret lover.
She receives suitors, but does not take them seriously.
The widow ends her speech by encouraging her younger friends to learn from her experience.
The discussion ends with the married women acclaiming the widow as a good example for them:
The narrator departs for his home and ends the poem with the question,
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