13. MS. Rawlinson Poetic. 32, vo (after 1450). Thirty-two stanzas, each of four short lines, corresponding to half the normal stanza; stanzas 17 to 30 are peculiar to this MS. The greater part printed by Fiedler, ibid. p. 222.
14. MS. Porkington 10, fol. 79, vo (fifteenth century). Twelve six-lined stanzas, of which stanzas 7 to 11 are peculiar to this MS. Printed by Halliwell, Early Eng. Misc. in Prose and Verse, selected from an inedited MS. of the 15th cent., p. 39 (Warton Club, 1855), and by Fiedler, ibid. p. 225.
15. MS. Balliol 354, fol. 207, vo (Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, dated before 1504). Sixteen stanzas, of which stanzas 6 to 14 introduce an independent digression on the Nine Worthies. Printed by Flügel, Anglia, xxvi. 94 (1903), and by Roman Dyboski, Songs, Carols, and Other Misc. Poems, p. 90 (E.E.T.S. 1907, extra ser. ci).
16. MS. Harl. 984, fol. 72, ro (sixteenth century). The preceding leaf of the MS. has been torn out, leaving only two lines of what may be assumed to be verse 6, and the whole of verse 7, which occur with other fragments on the last leaf but one.
17. The Maitland MS. Pepysian Library, Magd. Coll. Cambr., MS. 2553, p. 338 (c. 1555-1585). Seven stanzas in the Lowland Scots dialect, with the ascription ‘quod Marsar’. Thomas Pinkerton published portions of the MS. in his Ancient Scottish Poems never before in print . . . from the MS. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland (London, 1786), but omitted Eird upon Eird. Not printed before.
18. The Reidpeth MS. Cambridge Univ. Libr. Ll. 5. 10, fol. 43, vo, copied 1622-1623 ‘a me Joanne Reidpeth’. Seven stanzas, probably transcribed from the Maitland MS., but concluding ‘quod Dumbar’. Not printed before.
MS. of the C Version:
The Cambridge Text. Cambr. Univ. Libr. Ii. 4. 9, fol. 67, ro (fifteenth century). Eighty-two lines comprising twenty-two or twenty-three stanzas. The text is followed by a coloured picture of a young knight, standing on a hill with a skeleton below. A scroll proceeding from the knight has the words: Festina tempus et memento finis, while one proceeding from the skeleton runs: In omni opere memorare nouissima et in eternum non peccabis. Printed by Heuser, Kildare-Gedichte, p. 213.
[ The A Version.]
The A version exists in two forms, one a short popular stanza of four lines (MS. Harl. 2253), apparently of the nature of a riddle, the other a longer poem of seven English and seven Latin stanzas (MS. Harl. 913), each English verse being followed by its Latin equivalent. The metrical form of the Latin verses is one often used in Latin poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a six-lined stanza, rimed aaaabb, with the rhythm of the well-known