THE #A# VERSION: 1. MS. Harleian 2253 1 2. MS. Harleian 913 1
THE #B# VERSION: 1. William Billyng’s MS 5 2. MS. Thornton 6 3. MS. Selden supra 53 7 4. MS. Egerton 1995 8 5. MS. Harleian 1671 9 6. MS. Brighton 10 7. The Stratford-on-Avon Inscription 11 8. MS. Rawlinson C. 307 12 9. MS. Harleian 4486 13 10. MS. Lambeth 853 14 11. MS. Laud Miscellaneous 23 16 12. MS. Cotton Titus A. xxvi 19 13. MS. Rawlinson Poetical 32 20 14. MS. Porkington 10 24 15. MS. Balliol 354 27 16. MS. Harleian 984 29 17. The Maitland MS. 30 18. John Reidpeth’s MS. 31
APPENDIX: I. ‘Erthe’ Poem in Latin, French, and English (Record Office Roll, Ex^r. K. R. Proceedings, Bdle. 1, and MS. British Museum Additional 25478) 41 II. (B Version) additions: 19. MS. Trinity College Cambridge R. 3. 21 47 20. MS. Trinity College Cambridge B. 15. 39 48
THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE POEM ‘ERTHE UPON ERTHE’.
The Middle English poem of _Erthe upon Erthe_ is one which occurs fairly frequently in fifteenth-century MSS. and even later. It was a favourite theme for Commonplace Books, and was frequently inserted on the spare leaves at the beginning or end of a manuscript. From the many texts of the poem which have survived, and from the fact that portions of it continued to be inscribed on walls and tombstones up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, a wide popularity may be deduced. The extant versions, moreover, point to a knowledge of the poem throughout the greater part of England, as well as in the south of Scotland. The grimness of the motive, based on the words _Memento homo quod cinis es et in cinerem reverteris_, allies the text both with the earlier group of poems relating to _The Soul and the Body_, and with the more or less contemporary _Dance of Death_, but whereas the two latter groups can claim a popularity which extended over western Europe, _Erthe upon Erthe_ exists only in Middle English texts, and in one parallel Latin version.[1] It is, indeed, difficult to see how the play upon the word _earth_ on which the poem depends could have been reproduced with equal success in any language outside English, and the Latin version is distinctly inferior in this respect. There would seem, therefore, to be good reason for the assumption that _Erthe upon Erthe_ is of English origin, belonging to the same class of literature as the English versions of the _Soul and Body_ poems.