SOURCE: Lyall, R. J. “The Sources of The Thre Prestis of Peblis and Their Significance.”The Review of English Studies XXXI, no. 123 (August 1980): 257-70.

In the following essay, Lyall argues that the fifteenth-century Scots poem The Thre Prestis of Peblis, was not influenced by the Gesta Romanorum, as crtiics who interpret it as a harbinger of humanism, rather than an echo of medievalism, have argued.

The fifteenth-century Scots poem The Thre Prestis of Peblis¹ is a composite of three linked tales, involving no less than seven narrative elements. The first, the basic narrative framework, concerns the carousing of the priests and their decision to rival one another in story-telling. The tale of Master John, ‘of þe thre questionis’, is a straightforward account of a king's attempt to discover the cause of the failings of his three Estates, and of the replies of their three spokesmen. Master Archibald's tale...