THE SCENE: The medieval historian Walter Bower strains artistic licence to its absolute breaking point in the following passage where he provides the extremely unlikely eulogy of a murderous queen, noting that she used “these or similar words”.
THE TEXT: Fergus is said to have been poisoned by his wife the queen who was excessively jealous of him because of his affairs with other women. She afterwards openly admitted the deed, although she was suspected by no one of such a crime. When she looked upon the dead king’s body, with mournful cries and tearing her hair, she bursts out with these or similar words: “most wretched of women, more savage than any wild beast, basest betrayer, what have you done? Have you not wickedly killed with a most cruel kind of treachery, most like in this respect to the asp and urged on by wanton madness, you lord the king, most loving of all husbands and handsome beyond the love of women, whom alone you loved with the innermost love of your heart more than all men now living? But this wicked crime will not go unpunished. I shall be avenged upon myself. Accordingly do you, accursed hand, hasten to prepare and do not let pass this same cup with which you drank the health of your lord, not long ago your sweetest lover, or boldly prepare an even more bitter cut for my lips too!” Then after she had drained the lethal draught she immediately began: “But that witch’s potion ought not to suffice as full atonement for me who committed such a great crime. No! rather should I be tied to the tails of horses and dragged off to be hanged and this unspeakable body should be burnt to ashes in fires of thorns and the ashes scattered to the wind.”
– Scotichronicon, Walter Bower, 15th Century AD
