The Middle English Poem, Erthe Upon Erthe

Ȝ ȝ (yogh: very common) ⁊ (Tironian ampersand) ā ē ī ō ū (vowels with macron)
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The combinations m~ , n~ and d~ represent letters with a decorative curl. Brackets are in the original.
The author’s father was James Murray of the Oxford English Dictionary.
British Museum, MS. Harl. 2253. c. 1307. fol. 57 v. ( slightly reduced )


Another poem of the same kind, which differs considerably from the A version, but is, in all probability, closely connected with it in origin, is common in fifteenth-century MSS. I have traced eighteen texts of this version, dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, all of which represent or are based upon the same common type, though individual transcribers appear to have expanded the theme according to their own taste. Such additions may easily be distinguished, since they seldom succeed in maintaining either the grim simplicity, or the fundamental play upon the word earth , which characterize the genuine portions of the poem. This common fifteenth-century type may be called the B version.
Lastly, a single fifteenth-century MS. (Cambridge University Library, Ii, 4. 9) has preserved a text of the poem in which some attempt seems to have been made to combine the A with the B version. This text may be called the C version, or Cambridge text.
In the following pages an attempt has been made to justify the premises in part laid down already, and to show that the A and B versions may be traced back to a common source, and that this source was not only confined to England, but was itself English.
The following is a list of the manuscripts in which the poem occurs:—