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, Essex, 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
associated with the rimes _towres_ : _bowres_ as in A (MS. Harl. 913,
v. 6). The former assumption 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 assumed 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.