Part 16 (1/2)
#Page 1.# #MS. Harl. 2253.# These four lines were apparently regarded by Wanley, together with the preceding French strophe, as forming part of the poem on the Death of Simon de Montfort, and are not noted by him in the British Museum Catalogue. Boddeker also omitted them from his _Altenglische Dichtungen des MS. Harl. 2253_ (Berlin 1878). They were, however, already noted by Pinkerton in 1786, see _Ancient Scottish Poems never before in print . . . from the MS. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland_, ii, Note on p. 466: 'In the same (i.e. Harleian) library, No.
2253, is another of the same kind, beginning,
Erthe toc of erthe erthe wyth wote.
It is only one stanza; and another piece of one stanza preceding it, both are put by Mr. Wanley, in the Catalogue, as part of a French song on Sir Simon de Montfort, which they follow: but such mistakes frequently arise from the crowded manner of old MSS.' The facsimile opposite the t.i.tle-page shows the lines as they occur in the MS.
#Page 5.# #William Billyng's MS.# The 'finely written and illuminated parchment roll' described by William Bateman in his preface to Billyng's _Five Wounds of Christ_, of which forty copies were privately printed by him at Manchester in 1814, contained the following poems:--
1. The Five Wounds of Christ (fifteen stanzas in rime royal).
2. At hygh none whan the belle dothe tylle (eighteen lines).
3. Erth owte of Erth (six stanzas).
4. Pes maketh plente (five lines).
The whole is signed #Willm~ Billyng#. It has been frequently suggested that Billyng was the author of these poems, but it is evident that he was not the author of _Erthe upon Erthe_, though his may be one of the earliest transcripts of the B version, and the lines _Pes maketh plente_ also occur elsewhere, cf. MS. Digby 230 (fifteenth century). He may have been the author of _The Five Wounds of Christ_, but it is more probable, considering the usual origin of other fifteenth-century collections of the kind, that he was merely the collector and transcriber of the texts.
Cf. F. J. Furnivall, _Notes and Queries_, IV. iii. 103. It is possible that this may be the William Billyng who, in 1474, became rector of Toft Monks in Norfolk on the presentation of the Provost and Scholars of King's College, Cambridge, and who appears to have held the benefice until 1506 (see _Notes and Queries_, III. iv. 173; Blomefield, _Norfolk_, viii. 63).[1] The parchment roll was formerly preserved in Bateman's collection of antiquities at Lomberdale House, Derbys.h.i.+re.
This collection was broken up and sold after Bateman's death, the archaeological remains being purchased by the Sheffield Museum, and the books and MSS. sold at Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge's rooms in 1893, but all attempts to trace Billyng's MS. after the breaking up of the collection have been unsuccessful. A copy of the printed text is in the British Museum.
Montgomery's reprint of the poem in 1827 was taken from Bateman's version, and differs from it only in some very slight corrections in spelling. It has been suggested that this reprint was the source of the _Earth upon Earth_ Epitaphs which occur, but these were current from the sixteenth century on, and, as has been already pointed out (see Introduction, pp. x.x.xvi ff.), the usual form of the Epitaph, even in the latest versions, differed from that of the actual poem.
#Page 7.# #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). A few lines are scribbled in another hand upon the front side of the leaf, which is otherwise blank. The back of the leaf was evidently unprotected, and is much rubbed and worn. The s.p.a.ce below Lydgate's last verse and colophon on fol. 158 v^o contains two odd stanzas in English in the same metre as Lydgate's poem, beginning 'Let se your hand my ladi, dam emperys', in a hand of the late fifteenth century, and a French stanza of four lines ('Qui met son cuer tout en Deu, Il a son cuer et si a Deu', &c.) in a French hand, perhaps as late as 1500. Both of these were quite possibly inserted in the MS.
later than _Erthe upon Erthe_, the exact date of which is indeterminate, but it was probably copied in between 1450 and 1500.
#Page 8.# #MS. Egerton 1995.# This MS. was evidently a Commonplace book.
Its contents are described by Gairdner, _Collections of a London Citizen_ (Camden Society, 1876). The MS. is written throughout in fifteenth-century hand, and appears to be the work of one scribe.
Gairdner thinks the whole collection may be ascribed to William Gregory of the Skinners' Company, who was Mayor of London in 1451, and who seems to have been the author of part, at least, of the Chronicle of London at the end of the MS.
#Page 10.# #MS. Brighton.# Fiedler's account of this MS. is as follows:-- 'Noch eine andre Fa.s.sung des Gedichtes habe ich mir vor einigen Jahren aus einer Handschrift abgeschrieben, die damals im Besitze eines Antiquars in Brighton war, uber deren weiteren Verbleib ich aber nichts ermitteln konnte. Es war eine Pergamenthandschrift, folio, von 90 Blattern. Sie enthielt eine lateinische Abhandlung uber die sieben Sacramente ”Oculi Sacerdotis”, und auf der ursprunglich frei gebliebenen Ruckseite des letzten Blattes war von einer Hand des funfzehnten Jahrhunderts das englische Gedicht eingetragen.' (_Mod.
Lang. Review_, III. iii. 219.)
#Page 11.# #Stratford-on-Avon Inscription.# A full account of this inscription has been given in the Introduction, p. xii. The lines 'Whosoo hym be thowghte', there mentioned as being inscribed beneath _Erthe upon Erthe_, are given by Fisher as follows:--
Whosoo hym be thowght Inwardly and ofte How hard hyt ys to flett From bede to peyt From peyt to peyne that neu{er} Schall seys Certen He wold not doo no syn all {is} world to wynne.
The same lines are found on other monumental inscriptions. Weever (_Ancient Funeral Monuments_, p. 425) mentions them as occurring in sixteenth-century inscriptions in Churches at Saffron Walden and Faversham respectively, and Rogers (_Monuments and Monumental Inscriptions in Scotland_, ii. 210) quotes them from a tombstone in the parish of Dun. The following version is from Bodl. MS. Tanner 407, fol.
36, v^o (sixteenth century):--
He that hath thoughte ful in-wardly and ofte how hard it is to flyt fro bedde on to pyt fro pytte on to pyne whiche neuyr schal haue fyne for alle thys world to wynne wold not do a synne.
#Page 16.# #MS. Laud Misc. 23.# This is the only text which is not written in metrical lines. The MS. being small, it was not as a rule possible to fit one line of the poem into a single line of the page, and the run-on lines involved waste of s.p.a.ce. The scribe wrote verse 1 in metrical lines, verses 2 and 3 as if in two long lines, and the remainder of the poem in paragraphs, each paragraph coinciding with a verse. Each new line or paragraph is indicated by a red capital, and the metrical lines are distinguished by pause-marks (v?, , v,
), and by touching up the first letter of the line in red. In vv. 6, 7, and 8, the scribe appears to have lost count of the lines, as the three verses are written in two paragraphs, and letters in the middle of a line are often marked in red. At the top of the first leaf a later hand has scribbled the words _haue made me_. A few other such scribbles occur elsewhere in the MS.
l. 26 (p. 17). _Thi body that was rank and louyd of alle men, is hatyd._ The reading is inferior to MS. Lambeth, l. 27: