In view of this evidence, I am inclined to think that the Latin version in MS. Harl. 913 is the translation, and the English the original, and that the oldest form of Erthe upon Erthe which has been preserved is that found in the four lines in MS. Harl. 2253:—
Erþe toc of erþe erþe wyþ woh &c.
Short riddling stanzas of the kind, based upon the Latin phrases mentioned above, may have been popular in the thirteenth century, and this particular one was evidently known and used by the author of the Song on the Times.[21] The writer of the version preserved in MS. Harl. 913 seems to have been a more learned man, acquainted with poems like the Dialogues between the Soul and the Body, who elaborated the four lines of MS. Harl. 2253, and perhaps other verses of the same kind, into a poem of seven six-lined stanzas, the additional couplet often introducing a new idea precisely as in the case of the similarly expanded verse-form in MS. Porkington. Either this man or a later transcriber appears to have added the Latin rendering which accompanies the poem, and to have further exercised himself in varying the word-play. Heuser[22] points out that the mistakes in the MS. would support the view that the English text is a copy of an original in another dialect, and it is possible that the Latin version belongs to this MS. alone, since a second poem in the same MS. is accompanied by an unfinished translation into Latin.
This theory as to the origin of the two texts of the A version receives further support from the fact that it also accounts most satisfactorily for the development and popularity of the B version. Apart from the play on the word erthe and the similarity of the theme, there is only one point of close verbal connexion between the two versions. In MS. Harl. 913 (A) the sixth stanza runs as follows:—
Erþ gette on erþ gersom & gold,
Erþ is þi moder, in erþ is þi mold.
Erþ uppon erþ be þi soule hold;
Er erþe go to erþe, bild þi long bold.
Erþ bilt castles, and erþe bilt toures;
Whan erþ is on erþe, blak beþ þe boures.