Seinte marie godes moder : f{ ra}m þaposteles nas noȝt Þo þe holi gost a wit sonedai : among hem was ibroȝt.
This version seems to rest on the _Legenda Aurea_[I-24] as an original, although the incident of the tardy arrival of Thomas, which is contained in the Latin, is wanting in this version.
This same version appears in a later MS., Bodl. 779,[I-25] of the 16th century. In this MS. the legend cycle is greatly extended by the addition of a whole new series of legends. The number of legends in this MS. reaches the number of 135, of which the version of the Assumption is number 57.
Another version of our legend is that belonging to the Northern legend cycle, and preserved in two MSS.: Harl. 4196 and Cott. Tiber. E. VII,[I-26] of which the latter is the older, but the former the more complete. These two texts correspond word for word, and apart from possible scribal blunder, letter for letter, abbreviation for abbreviation. Harl. MS. 4196 is a large folio on parchment, evidently of about the middle of the 14th century, and written in a beautiful large hand of the Northern type. It has 258 double-columned leaves, and contains (1) several parts of the gospel in verse, which end at fol. 132 _a_, then after a blank page, (2) collection of legends in verse, with special title and an introduction of eight verses (folios 133-205), then as a sort of appendix, (3) a metrical gospel of Nicodemus (folios 206-215 _a_), and (4) the Prick of Conscience in verse. This version, which appears as number 8 in the second division, the legend collection of the Harl. MS., and whose text is identical in the two MSS. above mentioned, opens as follows,--
Of mari milde now will I mene Þat of all heuyns es corond quene And lady of all erth to tell And also Emp{ er}ise of hell.
Another version belonging to the Southern cycle is that contained in the younger MS. of this cycle, Lambeth MS. 223, a 4to parchment from the beginning of the 15th century. (Cf. Horstmann, Neue Folge, p. xlvii. and Notes.) In this MS. the Assumption appears, not in the legendary itself, but as the fifth and last division in the _temporal_, which is prefixed to the Southern cycle of legends. This version has frequent rimes within the verse, and the last half verse has four stresses. The version agrees in many respects with the Northern one just described and also with the earlier Southern version, the one of our present volume. The opening lines are as follows,--