Donegild's Revenge

An imagined narrative inspired by the deranged mother, Donegild,

in Chaucer’s The Man of Law’s Tale, from The Canterbury Tales.

My name is Donegild, daughter of kings.

Mother of conquerors who triumph brings

To Northumbria, and lards our green hills

With Scots’ bone and blood. We count our kills

In hundreds, slice open their grey dead eyes,

Geld their corpses, disembowel with eager cries

Their foetid sacks and smear them with their shit.

From childhood on I savoured well the spit

I rheumed upon their leader’s corpse, recall

The victory climax I shivered in our hall.

These were the days of glory for our kin

Before Christ, God’s son, talked to us of sin.

A curse to those black days when on the sea

Black Custance landed on our strand, beauty

Turning my son’s head and so turning him

From warrior to whelping fool within

That all his fucking got sucked out his cock

Making him a cringing lamb, instead of rock.

She brought her foreign heart into our land

Turning Alla from my lion to her sand.

Anon a messenger arrives who goes

To Alla who is bringing Scots the woes

Their invasions so deserve, with the news

That his son is born by the sad bitch who’s

Taken up his bed. The messenger drinks

Deep and soon with insensate snoring sinks

Into a stupor. Stealing my deadly chance

I take the letter with its news, enhance

with cunning pen the tidings of great joy

And say instead a monster child destroys

Their happiness. A horrible, stained red

Gargoyle grinned up at them from bloody bed

Which fixed them with a gorgon stare and sowed

Horror as each pulse throbbed skin like a toad

And foetid stink so burned the air to smell

Like rotting corpses come straight out of hell.

And I did add, that though it made all faint

All saw t’was caused by the mother’s foreign taint.

This sucking sow degenerates our breed

And sows her horror with his selfless seed.

The messenger carries swiftly to the king

The tarnished note, who writes back, the weakling,

Of Christ’s will, written in a note I read

While the servant’s sunk in sodden, drunken mead.

And when he’s lost in deep and swinish sleep

Once more I change the note to subtly reap

Revenge on this dull, usurping, sucking whore

So in false hand, as king, I command, implore

The banishment of her and her weak son

Forcing her boat before the tide has run

To take to the deep and everlasting sea

To be swallowed up for all eternity.

When I learned that this had in truth been done

I laughed all night until the risen sun

For now I knew whatever might befall

Gone was the black heart that makes all flesh crawl.