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.
[ MSS. of the Poem ‘Erthe upon Erthe’.]
The following is a list of the manuscripts in which the poem occurs:—
MSS. of the A Version:
1. MS. Harl. 2253, fol. 57, vo, dated c. 1307. Four lines inserted between a French poem on the Death of Simon de Montfort, and an English poem on the Execution of Simon Fraser. Printed by J. Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads from the Reign of K. Henry II to the Revolution, p. 13 (1790), by E. Flügel, Anglia, xxvi. 216 (1903), and by W. Heuser, Die Kildare-Gedichte (Bonner Beiträge zur Anglistik, xiv. 179) (1904). (See the facsimile opposite the title-page.)
2. MS. Harl. 913, fol. 62, ro (c. 1308-1330). Seven six-lined English stanzas alternating with seven of the same purport in Latin. Printed by T. Wright, Reliquiae Antiquae, ii. 216 (1841), by F. J. Furnivall, Early Eng. Poems and Lives of Saints, p. 150 (printed for the Philological Society, Berlin, 1862), and by W. Heuser, ibid., p. 180.
MSS. of the B Version:
1. William Billyng’s MS. (dated 1400-1430). Five four-lined stanzas, preceded by the figure of a naked body, rudely drawn, having a mattock in its right hand, and a spade at its feet. At the end of the poem is a prone figure of a skeleton accompanied by two draped figures.[3] Printed by W. Bateman, Billyng’s Five Wounds of Christ, no. 3 (Manchester, 1814),[4] ‘from a finely written and illuminated parchment roll, about two and three-quarter yards in length: it is without date, but by comparing it with other poetry, it appears to have been written early in the fifteenth century; the illuminations and ornaments with which it is decorated correspond to those of missals written about the reign of Henry V; the style may therefore fix its date between the years 1400 and 1430. The author[5] gives his name and mark at the bottom of the roll.’ Reprinted from Bateman’s text by J. Montgomery, The Christian Poet, edit. 1 and 2, p. 45 (1827), edit. 3, p. 58 (1828).
2. MS. Thornton (Lincoln Cath. Libr.), fol. 279 (c. 1440). Five stanzas[6] without mark of strophic division. Printed by G. G. Perry, Religious Poems in Prose and Verse, p. 95 (E.E.T.S., No. xxvi, 1867, reprinted 1889, p. 96), and by C. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers (Richard Rolle of Hampole), i. 373 (1895).