#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. Böddeker 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 title-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:--