[APPENDIX I.]
The three following Erthe poems, in Latin, French, and English respectively, were discovered too late for inclusion in the text. They represent renderings of the same poem in the three languages, and are preserved on the back of a Roll[1] in the Public Record Office, containing a copy of the Ordinances of the fifth year of Edward II (of which other copies exist in the British Museum, the Record Office, and the Treasury at Canterbury). The poems in question are written on the back of the Roll, towards the end, the Latin and French in parallel columns, and the English below, five verses under the Latin, and four under the French. They are preceded by a number of Latin recipes in another hand, and a few in French follow. The handwriting of the poems is smaller and neater than that of the Ordinances, or the Latin recipes, but was ascribed by Hunter[2] to the time of Edward II, and may perhaps be assigned to the fourteenth century. The French is fourteenth-century Anglo-French, and the texts probably belong to that century, though this copy of them may not have been made until after 1400.
A nineteenth-century transcript of the poems exists in the British Museum, Addit. MS. 25478 (fol. 1-3), described in the Catalogue as containing ‘Transcripts of miscellaneous English poetry, with a few Latin pieces, chiefly derived from MS. sources: xivth to xixth century’. The binding is marked ‘Collectanea Hunteriana’, and the MS. was acquired with various others of the Hunter collection in 1863. The handwriting varies, and these three poems are not in Hunter’s own hand. The transcript is headed ‘Copy of a Poem in Latin, French, and English, which is written in a hand of the reign of Edward II, on the dorse of a Roll which contains a copy of the ordinances of the fifth year of Edward II, which are printed in the Statutes of the Realm I. 157-168’. The text given below has been collated with this transcript, and variant readings in the latter given in the footnotes under the name Hunter (H.).
The British Museum transcript was discovered by Miss Helen Sandison of Bryn Mawr, U.S.A., who kindly acquainted me with her discovery, and was of great assistance in the search for the original Roll, which was eventually found in a bundle awaiting rearrangement at the Record Office. A large stain on the original text has rendered a considerable portion of the Latin and a few words in the French almost illegible, and Hunter’s transcript has left blanks at these points. Mr. S. C. Ratcliff, of the Record Office, has given me much kind and courteous assistance in deciphering the missing words, thanks to which I have been able to fill up all the gaps, except that in verse 8, l. 3 of the Latin. Hunter’s text at this point runs as follows:—
| 4. l. 4. | Sic t’ra putedinis . . . t’re venas. |
| 6. l. 4. | Terra t’rã faciat flere ieu . . . . . |
| 7. | De t’ra resurg’e t’ra deb . . . . . . . . Et quod t’ra meruit . . . . . . . . Hic dum terra vix’it . . . . . . . Ut in t’ra valeat . . . . . dere |
| 8. | Adu’sus t’rigenas . . . . terra stabit Et t’ra int’roga . . . . . . . . abit Terra finem cap . . . . . . . gabit Quod terra promiserat t’ra . . . urgabit. |
and in the French:—
| 9. l. 2. | Sayt cydaunt a la tere qe tere soit sauve . . . . . . . eyne de tere ou tere est benure. |
Record Office Roll (Exr. K. R. Parl. Proc., Bdle. 1).
The following text was printed on two pairs of facing pages:
| pg. 42 | Latin Text stz. 1-5 | French Text stz. 1-5 | pg. 43 |
| English Text stz. 1-3.2 | English Text stz. 3.3-5 | ||
| pg. 44 | Latin Text stz. 6-11 | French Text stz. 6-10 | pg. 45 |
| English Text stz. 6-7 | English Text stz. 8-9 |