The earliest texts of the poem known to be extant are found in MSS. Harleian 2253 and 913, both dated about the beginning of the fourteenth century. The two texts vary greatly in length--MS. Harl. 2253 consists of four lines as against seven six-lined stanzas in MS. Harl. 913--and the latter text has the parallel Latin rendering mentioned above, but they coincide so far as they go, and appear to represent a thirteenth or fourteenth-century type of the poem, which may be called the A version.[2]
Another poem of the same kind, which differs considerably from the A version, but is, in all probability, closely connected with it in origin, is common in fifteenth-century MSS. I have traced eighteen texts of this version, dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, all of which represent or are based upon the same common type, though individual transcribers appear to have expanded the theme according to their own taste. Such additions may easily be distinguished, since they seldom succeed in maintaining either the grim simplicity, or the fundamental play upon the word _earth_, which characterize the genuine portions of the poem. This common fifteenth-century type may be called the B version.
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.
The following is a list of the manuscripts in which the poem occurs:--
1. MS. Harl. 2253, fol. 57, v^o, 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.)