Erthe Upon Erthe Part 4

that alle ine frend beon fro e fledde.

Cf. _Death_ 97.

Hwer beo alle ine freond et fayre e bi-hehte And fayre e igretten Bi weyes and bi strete.

Nu heo walle wrecche Alle e forlete Nolde heo non herestonkes[19]

Nu e imete.

_MS. Cambr._ l. 21 (C).

When erth has gotyn erthe alle that he maye He schal haue but seven fote at his laste daye.

Cf. _Soul & Body_ (_MSS. Auchinl._, _Digby_).

Now schaltow haue at al i sie Bot seuen fet, vnnee at.

The play upon the word _earth_ recurs in other English poems. Cf.

_A Song on the Times_ (MS. Harl. 913), early fourteenth century--

[20]Whan erthe hath erthe i-gette And of erthe so hath i-nou?, When he is therin i-stekke, Wo is him that was in wou?.

where the idea and the two rime-words are the same as in _MS. Harl._ 2253--

Ere toe of ere ere wy woh, Ere oer ere to e ere droh, Ere leyde ere in erene roh, o heuede ere of ere ere 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; Sith it is, according by it I wolle abide, As for the first parte of my wille, that erthe erthe hide.

In this case the English words are evidently based upon the Latin phrase, but this does not disprove an English origin for the poem _Erthe upon Erthe_, since any verses of the kind must ultimately have been based on the idea that man is dust, and the idea itself must have been first presented and have become widely known through such Latin elegiac phrases as _Memento h.o.m.o quod cinis es et in cinerem reverteris_, or _De terra plasmasti me_, both of which so frequently accompany _Erthe upon Erthe_, or as the above cited _Terram terra tegat_. The verse in _MS.

Lansdowne_ might rather be considered as supplying further proof of the popular tendency to replace such phrases by English verses, expressing the same idea, but themselves English, not Latin in origin, and making the most of the possible word-play. Such word-plays were evidently popular between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Cf. the well-known pa.s.sage in _Piers Plowman_, c. xxi. 389.

So lyf shal lyf lete ther lyf hath lyf anyented, So that lyf quyte lyf, the olde lawe hit asketh.

_Ergo_, soule shal soule quyte and synne to synne wende.

In view of this evidence, I am inclined to think that the Latin version in MS. Harl. 913 is the translation, and the English the original, and that the oldest form of _Erthe upon Erthe_ which has been preserved is that found in the four lines in MS. Harl. 2253:--

Ere toc of ere ere wy woh &c.

Short riddling stanzas of the kind, based upon the Latin phrases mentioned above, may have been popular in the thirteenth century, and this particular one was evidently known and used by the author of the _Song on the Times_.[21] The writer of the version preserved in MS.

Harl. 913 seems to have been a more learned man, acquainted with poems like the Dialogues between _the Soul and the Body_, who elaborated the four lines of MS. Harl. 2253, and perhaps other verses of the same kind, into a poem of seven six-lined stanzas, the additional couplet often introducing a new idea precisely as in the case of the similarly expanded verse-form in MS. Porkington. Either this man or a later transcriber appears to have added the Latin rendering which accompanies the poem, and to have further exercised himself in varying the word-play. Heuser[22] points out that the mistakes in the MS. would support the view that the English text is a copy of an original in another dialect, and it is possible that the Latin version belongs to this MS. alone, since a second poem in the same MS. is accompanied by an unfinished translation into Latin.

This theory as to the origin of the two texts of the A version receives further support from the fact that it also accounts most satisfactorily for the development and popularity of the B version. Apart from the play on the word _erthe_ and the similarity of the theme, there is only one point of close verbal connexion between the two versions. In MS. Harl.

913 (A) the sixth stanza runs as follows:--

Er gette on er gersom & gold, Er is i moder, in er is i mold.

Er uppon er be i soule hold; Er ere go to ere, bild i long bold.

Er bilt castles, and ere bilt toures; Whan er is on ere, blak be e boures.

In the B version, the rimes _gold_ : _mold_, _toures_ : _boures_, regularly recur in the third and fourth stanzas, and line 5 of the A text is preserved in slightly modified form in the first line of verse 3:-- (MS. Harl. 4486, vv. 3 and 4)

Erthe apon erthe wynnethe castelles and towres.

Then seythe erthe to erthe: 'These bythe alle owres.'

When erthe apon erthe hath byggede vp his bowres, Then schalle erthe for the erthe suffre scharpe schowres.

Erthe gothe apon erthe as molde apon molde.

So goethe erthe apon erthe alle gleterynge in golde, Lyke as erthe unto erthe neuer go scholde, And ?et schalle erthe into erthe rather then he wolde.

In the Cambridge text the rime-words _towres_ : _bours_ are introduced twice over, representing both the versions given above:--

(ll. 63, 64) Erthe bygyth hallys & erthe bygith towres, When erth is layd in erth, blayke is his bours;

as in the _A_ version;

(ll. 5, 7) Erthe vpon erth has hallys & towris . . .

But quan erth vpon erth has bygyd his bowres,

as in the B version.

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. Both the A and the B versions might therefore be held to depend upon popular stanzas of this kind, which gave rise about the end of the thirteenth century to the long poem of MS. Harl. 913, and during the fourteenth century to the original of the B version, a poem in seven four-lined stanzas. The earlier version is connected more particularly with the Southwest Midland district; the later seems to have originated rather in the North or North Midlands, but it soon became known all over England, and is found in the South of Scotland shortly after 1500. Only one fifteenth-century writer, the author of the Cambridge text, shows direct knowledge of the A text, but the B version was evidently widely known, and a favourite theme for additions and modifications. On tombstones and mural inscriptions it survived up to the nineteenth century.

LATER VERSIONS OF THE POEM.

As has been already pointed out, the Middle English texts of _Erthe upon Erthe_ occur for the most part in the Commonplace Books of the day, often on the spare leaves at the beginning or end of the MS., as if the collector or some later owner had been struck by the poem and anxious to preserve it. 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.

Here the first two lines represent a corrupt type of the same lines in verse 3 of the B version, while the rimes _wroght_ : _nought_ recall verse 1.

Another interesting trace of a late popular version is mentioned in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for March, 1824, where a certain Mr. J. Lawrence tells how he was invited, during a visit to Beaumont Hall, Ess.e.x, to see the following inscription, written and decorated by a cow-boy on an attic wall:--

Earth goes upon the earth, glittering like gold; Earth goes to the earth sooner than 'twould; 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 type[23] in which the rimes _gold_ : _mold_, &c. were immediately a.s.sociated with the rimes _towres_ : _bowres_ as in A (MS. Harl. 913, v. 6). The former a.s.sumption is the more probable, since the verse appears to be directly based upon stanzas 3 and 4 of the usual B version.

The majority of the later instances of the text occur on tombstones or memorial tablets. The poem was peculiarly adapted for this purpose, based as it was on the very words of the Burial Service. Indeed, the short verses from which it is here a.s.sumed to have originated might well be supposed to have been written in the first place as epitaphs, if evidence of the use of English epitaphs in the thirteenth century[24]

were forthcoming. As has been already stated, the seven verses of the normal B version occurred in full among the mural paintings in the Chapel of the Holy Trinity at Stratford-on-Avon, belonging to the Guild of the Holy Cross, where they appear to have been used as a monumental inscription already in the latter part of the fifteenth century.

A well-known late instance of the text is the inscription on a tombstone in the parish churchyard which surrounds Melrose Abbey, mentioned by Scott. The stone is headed as follows:--

Memento Mori.

Here lyes James Ramsay, portioner of Melrose, who died July 15th, 1761.

On the back is the following verse:--

The Earth goeth on the Earth Glistring like gold, The Earth goeth to the Earth Sooner than it wold; The Earth builds on the Earth Castles & Towers, The Earth says to the Earth: 'All shall be ours.'

This was translated into German by Theodor Fontane (_Poems_, 4th edit., Berlin, 1892, p. 447). Cf. Fiedler, _Mod. Lang. Review_, April 1908.