Take hede!
Whoso þinkyse on his ende, ful welle schal he spede.
It is obvious that these new lines are an afterthought, especially in the case of MS. Porkington, where the rime-word þouȝte has to be repeated. Possibly these three texts depend upon a common original in which the usual second line Erth hath gotyn vppon erth a dygnyte of noght was lacking, or MS. Egerton may have been the original of the other two. But MS. Harl. 1671 varies from the other two in the first line also, using a version which is otherwise confined to the Cambridge text—
Erthe apon erthe ys waxyne and wrought—
and both it and MS. Porkington begin erthe upon erthe like the later texts, as opposed to the more usual erthe owte of erthe, so that there is no clear evidence of a closer relationship between these three texts.
In verse 4, again, an inversion of the customary order of the second or third lines is common to MSS. Rawl. C., Porkington, Maitland, Reidpeth, and the Stratford-on-Avon inscription, but the verse easily lends itself to transposition of the kind, and in MS. Rawl. C. the usual first line is also put third, so that the order of lines as compared with the normal arrangement becomes 2. 3. 1. 4. Beyond the self-evident fact that the Maitland and Reidpeth MSS. must be grouped together, no relationship of the MSS. can be deduced from this transposition, though it may point to a second popular version with inversion of lines 2 and 3.
One of the most important differences of reading in the common stanzas occurs in the first line of the poem, where twelve of the eighteen MSS. read erthe out of erthe, while the remaining six, as well as the Cambridge text, have erthe upon erthe. Three of these six are definitely later transcripts: MS. Porkington is obviously a later modification of the original four-lined stanza, and MSS. Maitland and Reidpeth belong to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries respectively; the beginning of MS. Harl. 984 is not preserved, and the remaining two texts, MSS. Selden and Harl. 1671, belong to c. 1450, while the Cambridge text, as will be shown later, cannot be regarded as original. Evidently erthe owt of erthe was the original reading, but the version erthe upon erthe was introduced early, and appears to have survived the other. A similar change occurs in the last line of verse 2, where MS. Harl. 1671 and the Stratford text substitute erth upon erth for out of, from, of, of the other texts, and again in the third line of verse 4 (l. 2 in the texts mentioned above as transposing these lines) where the same two MSS. read erth upon erth for the normal erth unto (into, to) erthe; also in the fourth line of verse 7, where MSS. Harl. 4486, Lamb., Laud, Maitland, and Reidpeth read upon for owte of. Now the last two lines of the first verse of the poem invariably use the phrase erth upon erthe, and it occurs repeatedly throughout the poem as a synonym for man: e.g. verse 2, line 1; 3, ll. 1, 3; 4, ll. 1, 2 (or 3); 5, l. 3; 6, ll. 1, 3; 7, l. 1. It was very natural that the common phrase, and the one best adapted to serve as a title to the poem, should tend to replace others, but it seems probable that wherever the substitution occurs it may be taken as due to a later tradition, and consequently as a proof of non-originality or comparative lateness in the text in which it is found. A similar change, and one to be explained in a similar way, is the introduction of wonderly for wyckydly in the first line of verse 7 on the analogy of the first line of the poem, which occurs in MSS. Harl. 1671 and Stratford, and also in the late MSS. Maitland and Reidpeth.
Other variations of reading are less noteworthy. In the second line of verse 1, ten MSS., ranging from the early Thornton and Lambeth to the late Maitland and Reidpeth, read dignite, while the others vary between nobley (MS. Brighton, cf. the Cambridge text), nobul þyng (Billyng), worschyp (Selden), and an abbey, perhaps an error for nobley (Harl. 4486). The remaining three MSS. omit the line. In the fourth line of verse 2, the alliterative piteous parting of MSS. Billyng, Egerton, Brighton, Harl. 4486, Lamb., Laud, Titus, and Rawl. P., is replaced by hard parting not only in the Stratford text and in the later MSS. (Porkington, Balliol, Maitland, Reidpeth), but also in MSS. Thornton and Rawl. C., while other readings are dolful (MS. Selden, cf. the Cambridge text) and heuy (MS. Harl. 1671). It is difficult here to decide between piteous and hard, but the preference should probably rest with the alliterative phrase. In the fourth line of verse 3, the alliterative scharpe schowres is evidently the original reading, and it occurs in all texts except Stratford, Rawl. P., and Balliol.
In the first line of verse 4, erthe goeth upon erthe as moulde upon moulde occurs in thirteen texts, and two others (Stratford and Balliol, cf. also the Cambridge text) keep the rime mould while altering the line. The other two readings found, colde opon colde (Rawl. C.), and golde appone golde (Thornton), are obviously non-original, particularly the latter, which repeats the rime-word gold in two successive lines.
Other variations and occasional transpositions of lines occur in individual MSS., but are unimportant.