The poem begins with a conversation between a
man and a woman: He asks her if he may lie in her lap,
and she invites him to nap. The man is so “drowsy...
That of hys love he toke no kepe,” (ll. 8–9) the speaker
tells us, before directly addressing the man with a two-
line refrain—“With, Lullay, lullay, lyke a chylde, /
Thou slepyst to long, thou art begyled” (ll. 1–2)—
which follows all STANZAs except the fourth.
The second stanza begins with the woman kissing
the man into drowsiness and confusion, so that “he
wyst [knew] never where he was” and forgot “all dedely
syn” (ll. 13–14)—that is, his sexual desire. The next
lines couch the woman’s approaching deceit and infi -
delity in metaphor: Were sexual fi delity money, the
man is expecting a “payment” he will never receive.
The third stanza sees the woman crossing a river to
meet a second man, who “halsyd [held] her hartely and
kyst her swete” (l. 22). She tells him that her “lefe
[lover] rowtyth [snores] in hys bed” (l. 24) and that she
thinks her sleeping lover has a “hevy hed” (l. 25), dou-
bly suggestive of drowsiness and impotence.
In the fourth stanza, the speaker forgets the wom-
an’s situation entirely and roundly abuses the man for
drinking himself into drowsiness, forgetting his “lust
and lykyng,” and ultimately for discovering her infi del-
ity by waking up alone.
“Lullay” combines the language of a courtly lyric
with an infi delity plot and formally echoes 15th-cen-
tury religious lyrics in which the Virgin Mary rocks the
Christ child to sleep (see VIRGIN LYRICS). Skelton’s com-
bination of these traditions lends the poem its motive
ironies: The woman singing the man to sleep is some
distance from her virginity, and the man, who falls
asleep instead of having sex with her, saves himself
from “dedely syn” at the cost of being cuckolded. This
tension is emblematic of both Skelton and his poetry.
FURTHER READING
Dent, J. M. John Skelton. London: Orion Publishing Group,
1997.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. John Skelton’s Poetry. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967.
Gordon, Ian A. John Skelton. New York: Octagon Books,
1970.
Nathaniel Z. Eastman
LUTE SONG See AYRE.
LYDGATE, JOHN (ca. 1370–ca. 1450) Along
with GEOFFREY CHAUCER and JOHN GOWER, John Lydgate
was one of the most widely read and highly esteemed
poets of the 15th century. Born in the village of Lydgate
(or Lidgate) in Suffolk, he entered a Benedictine abbey
at Bury St. Edmunds around 1386 and was ordained in- At some point he attended Gloucester Hall, the
Benedictine college at Oxford. There he studied rheto-
ric and composed his fi rst verses, a translation of Aes-
op’s Fables. In 1423, Lydgate was appointed prior of
Hatfi eld Broadoak in Essex, a post he subsequently
relinquished in 1432. Absent from England from 1426
to 1429 as a member of the duke of Bedford’s retinue
in France, Lydgate returned to England, and in 1433
he moved to the abbey of St. Edmunds, where he
remained until his death.
Lydgate’s canon is remarkably diverse and expan-
sive. It has been estimated that he wrote about 145,000
lines of verse over the course of his lifetime, covering
many genres, including short didactic poems, devo-
tional poetry, HAGIOGRAPHY, ROMANCEs, DREAM VISIONs,
and historiography. He also acquired a variety of
patrons, among whom were members of royalty and
nobility as well as rural gentry, members of religious
orders, and craft guilds.
Among Lydgate’s fi rst signifi cant works is the Troy
Book, a translation in COUPLETs of Guido delle Colonne’s
Historia destructionis Troiae, which supplements the
original poem in order to produce a full narrative of
the fall of Troy. The Siege of Thebes, Lydgate’s next
major work, is framed as a Canterbury tale and func-
tions as a precursor to GEOFFREY CHAUCER’s “The
Knight’s Tale.” While abroad in France, Lydgate com-
posed Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (1428) and the Danse
Macabre (ca. 1430), a translation of a French text
inscribed on the cloister walls of the Church of the
Holy Innocents in Paris.
Upon returning to England, Lydgate wrote a num-
ber of highly dramatic occasional works, including
mummer plays for the guilds of the Goldsmiths and
the Mercers and poems celebrating the coronation of
Henry VI. It was also during this period that he was
commissioned by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, to
LYDGATE, JOHN 257