Khun Chang Khun Phaen (KCKP) is a long narrative poem about love and death. With in the canon of pre-modern Thai literature, it is distinctive because it originated locally rather than being adapted from a foreign source, and because its main characters are relatively ordinary people rather than kings and gods. The standard modern version was edited by Prince Damrong Rajanubhab and published in 1917-18.1 That book has tended to be treated exactly like a poem, play, or novel in the western tradition—namely , a fixed text. But in fact the poem has a career, a history, a past. This article peers into that past.