“ The question as to the source of the poem Erthe upon Erthe, and the relationship of the A and B versions to the original, and to each other, is a difficult one. The existence of a parallel Latin version in one of the oldest MSS. is clearly an important point to be taken into consideration in any attempt at an investigation of the origin of the poem, and it will be well before proceeding further to form some conclusion as to the relation in which the English and Latin stanzas in MS. Harl. 913 stand to each other. ”

“ In any case, if he were a contemporary of Dunbar, he could scarcely be assigned to a sufficiently early date to account for the widespread popularity of Erthe upon Erthe all over England in 1450, and the fact that the two MSS. assign the poem to different authors, of whom Dunbar is manifestly impossible, and Mersar at least improbable, may be explained as an instance of that readiness of posterity to attach a known name to a work of unknown origin, of which other examples are not wanting. ”

“ Now the last two lines of the first verse of the poem invariably use the phrase erth upon erthe, and it occurs repeatedly throughout the poem as a synonym for man: e.g. verse 2, line 1; 3, ll. 1, 3; 4, ll. 1, 2 (or 3) ; 5, l. 3; 6, ll. 1, 3; 7, l. 1. It was very natural that the common phrase, and the one best adapted to serve as a title to the poem, should tend to replace others, but it seems probable that wherever the substitution occurs it may be taken as due to a later tradition, and consequently as a proof of non-originality or comparative lateness in the text in which it is found. ”

“ 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 play on the word earth, which is the most essential feature of the poem, could not have been given with the same effect as in English either in Latin or in any mediaeval language.15
Thirdly, in support of an English origin it may be urged that close verbal connexion can be traced between the English text of both versions, but more especially of the earlier (A) , and other poems dating from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, particularly the various Dialogues of The Soul and the Body:—
The play upon the word earth recurs in other English poems. ”

“ It is improbable, at least, that the Erthe upon Erthe poems should all be derived from two Latin poems, the differences between which are too great to admit of a common original, but which were both translated into English verse, and became, in course of time, modified and popularized. ”

“ That this interest was not confined to the fifteenth century is shown by the occurrence of the text in the Maitland and Reidpeth MSS. A still later instance of it occurs in the Pillerton Hersey Registers, dating from 1559 onwards, where the following verse has been scribbled on the last leaf, probably by some seventeenth-century clerk (cf. C. C. Stopes, Athenaeum, Sept. 19, 1908) :—
Earth upon earth bould house and bowrs,
Earth upon earth sayes all is ours.
Earth upon earth when all is wroght,
Earth upon earth sayes all is for nought. ”

“ P. was obviously acquainted with the Lambeth text, or its original, and added to it certain stanzas of his own, leaving out three of the verses in Lambeth to make room for these. Whether the eighth stanza which MSS. Harl. 4486, Lamb., Laud, and Rawl. P. have in common belongs to the original type of the B version, or was itself a later addition, can scarcely be determined, but as it seems to be confined to these four texts, the latter view is perhaps the more probable. It must, however, have been added early, as it occurs already in MSS. Lamb. ”

“ The two stanzas of the B version which contain these rime-words are the two which recur most frequently on tombstones and mural inscriptions, and it seems possible that they represent a second early form of the Erthe poems. It is evident that the rime-words gold : mold, bowres : towres, depend upon an early tradition. Probably verses similar to the short stanza in MS. Harl. 2253, and containing these words, were in existence before the learned writer of the longer A text in MS. Harl. 913 introduced them in his poem, and, becoming widely known, formed the nucleus of the B version. ”

“ Beyond the self-evident fact that the Maitland and Reidpeth MSS. must be grouped together, no relationship of the MSS. can be deduced from this transposition, though it may point to a second popular version with inversion of lines 2 and 3.
One of the most important differences of reading in the common stanzas occurs in the first line of the poem, where twelve of the eighteen MSS. read erthe out of erthe, while the remaining six, as well as the Cambridge text, have erthe upon erthe. ”

“ Earth shall to Earth goe e’er he wolde.
Earth upon Earth consyder may;
Earth goes to Earth naked away.
Earth though on Earth be stowt & gay
Earth shall from Earth passe poore away.
Be mercifull & charitable,
Relieve the poor as thou art able.
A shrowd to the grave
Is all thou shalt have.
This interesting monument has unfortunately disappeared. Doubtless there are many other traces of the poem to be found, but it appears to have been rarely used on tombstones after 1700,27 and earlier monuments, unless specially preserved, are rarely decipherable at the present day. ”

“ The handwriting of the poems is smaller and neater than that of the Ordinances, or the Latin recipes, but was ascribed by Hunter2 to the time of Edward II, and may perhaps be assigned to the fourteenth century. ”

“ MS. Laud Misc. is not written throughout in metrical lines, but the divisions of the stanzas, and, in most cases, of the lines, are clearly indicated.
10. The first leaf of this text has been torn out and the verses in brackets are only conjectural.
11. MS. Laud represents, in the main, the same version as MS. Lamb., but the variant readings preclude the idea of its being a copy of Lamb., unless the scribe deliberately tried to modify his original on the lines of Harl. 4486 and Rawl. P. The changes in the text (ll. 26, 27, 47: see Notes) show that it cannot be the original of Lamb. ”

“ Earth goes upon the earth, glittering like gold;
Earth goes to the earth sooner than ’twould;
xxxvi
Earth built upon the earth castles and towres;
Earth said to the earth, ‘All shall be ours.’
Here portions of verses 3 and 4 of the B version have been combined as in the epitaphs at Melrose and Clerkenwell cited below, pointing either to a corrupt popular version of the B text, or possibly to an earlier type23 in which the rimes gold : mold, &c. were immediately associated with the rimes towres : bowres as in A (MS. Harl. 913, v. 6) . ”

“ It is, however, of interest to find that the poem had made its way to Scotland by 1550 or thereabouts.
As regards dialect, the majority of the MSS. of the B version show traces of Northern dialect, most of them preserving the Nth. plural in -is in the rimes touris, schowrys, &c. In verse 3 also the majority of the texts have the Nth. bigged or biggid, but six (MSS. Billyng, Egerton, Rawl. P., Porkington, Balliol, and the Stratford text) use the Midl. or Sth. bilded or billed. In verse 4 the rime requires the form wold rather than the common Nth. ”

“ As exhaustive a search as was possible has been made for other texts of the poem, but it has often escaped cataloguing, and it is probable that other copies of the B version, at least, exist.
The punctuation, inverted commas, and regular use of initial capitals in the text are the Editor’s. The MSS. vary in their use of capitals, the same MS. being often inconsistent with itself, while the Cambridge text frequently employs them for unimportant words in the middle of the line, as p. ”

“ MS. Selden Supra 53. This text omits verse 5, and inverts the normal order of verses 4 and 6 (see Table on p. xvii of Introduction) . The text is written in a neat hand in the left-hand column on the back of a spare leaf (fol. 159) at the end of the MS., after Lydgate’s Dance of Macabre. The right-hand column contains Latin scribblings, perhaps by the scribe who re-wrote small portions of Erthe upon Erthe (see p. 7, footnotes) . ”

“ Thi body that was rank and louyd of alle men, is hatyd. The reading is inferior to MS. Lambeth, l. 27:
þan þi bodi þat was rank & undeuout of alle men is bihatid—
and the change led to the placing of the pause (indicated in the MS.) after men.
l. 27. Out of the erthe cam to this erthe his wantyng garnement. This line seems to be a compromise between the readings of MSS. Lamb. and Rawl. P.
(MS. Lamb. 28)
Out of þis erþe cam to þis erþe þis wrecchid garnement.
(MS. Rawl. P. 37)
Oute of the erthe cam the erthe wantynge his garnament. ”

“ Eight stanzas, of which three are peculiar to this MS., and are of a more distinctly Northern dialect than the remainder. The poem is the only English text in a MS. containing Latin prose and verse. Two Latin poems in the same hand as Erthe upon Erthe refer to the death of Gilbert Pynchbeck at York in 1458, which would fix the date c. 1460, or later. The three independent stanzas were printed by Fiedler, ibid. p. 221.
9. 8MS. Harl. 4486, fol. 146, ro (fifteenth century) . Eight stanzas added on the last leaf but one of a copy of Le Livre de Sydrac, immediately after the colophon. ”

“ Sir T. More, Works (ed. 1557, folio) , p. 77: ‘We wer never so gretly moved by the beholding of the Daunce of Deth pictured in Paule’s.’
39
Page 30. Maitland MS. Omitted by Pinkerton from his printed text of the Maitland MS. as ‘a silly jingling piece, shewing the vanity of man, who is but earth, building upon earth: priding himself in gold which is but earth’, &c. Pinkerton also knew of ‘several pieces of the same kind in MSS. of Old English poetry’, see Note on MS. Harl. ”

“ Dignite, dignitie, dignyte, dignytie, dygnite, dygnyte, dyngnyte, sb. high estate or position, honour 6.2, 11.2, 12.4, 14.5, 16.4, 19.2, 20.8, 27.2, 30.2, 31.2.
Disgesily, adv. strangely, extraordinarily 21.42; OF. desguisié, disguised. ”

“ MS. Harl. 913.
whan erþ haþ erþ . iwonne wiþ wow
þan erþ mai of erþ . nim hir inow
erþ vp erþ . falliþ fol frow
erþ toward erþ . delful him drow.
of erþ þou were makid . and mon þou art ilich
in on erþ awaked . þe pore and þe riche.
The connexion between these two versions might be explained in two ways. The short version of MS. Harl. 2253 may be the beginning of a transcript of the longer poem in which the scribe broke off because his memory failed him, or because he was only acquainted with a popular version of the opening lines. ”

“ Erþe oþer erþe to þe erþe droh,
Erþe leyde erþe in erþene þroh,
Þo heuede erþe of erþe erþe ynoh.
It will be remembered that these two MSS. (Harl. 913 and 2253) are the two which preserve texts of the A version, and the opening lines of the Song on the Times would appear to give further proof of a connexion between the two A texts.
Further, in MS. Lansdowne 762 (v. Reliquiae Antiquae I. 260) , under the heading Terram terra tegat, occur these lines:—
First to the erthe I bequethe his parte,
My wretched careyn is but fowle claye,
Like than to like, erthe in erthe to laye ”

“ O Earth! O Earth observe this well,
That Earth to Earth must go to dwell,
That Earth to Earth must close remain
Till Earth for Earth shall come again.
1. But this is not in agreement with Bateman’s opinion as to the age of the original parchment roll (1400-1430) , see Introduction, p. xi.
2. ? for.
41 APPENDIX I.
The three following Erthe poems, in Latin, French, and English respectively, were discovered too late for inclusion in the text. ”

“ The poem was inserted amongst the imprinted works of Lydgate, who could not have been alive in 1483, cf. MS. Harl. 4011, fol. 169, vo, where it occurs among Lydgate’s works.
In John Taylor’s Trauels of Twelve-Pence, 1630 folio (Spenser Soc. reprint, p. 82) , this verse occurs:—
Far2 though from Earth man hath originall,
And to the Earth, from whence he came doth fall,
Though he be Earth, & can claime nought but earth,
(As the fraile portion due vnto his birth)
Yet many thousands that the earth doth breed,
Haue no place (certain) where to lodge or feed. ”