Dancing and Dicing with Death: literary evidence for some lost wall paintings in Wales1

The survival of medieval wall paintings is a matter of chance, and what survives is not necessarily representative. Documentary and literary evidence can give us an insight into what has been lost. In Wales, traditional vernacular poetry suggests the existence of a possible three depictions of the Dance of Death, as well as other representations of the figure of Death. These add to the very small number of surviving examples of the art of the macabre and suggest that the cult of the memento mori was more widespread in Wales than has hitherto been argued.