The three following _Erthe_ poems, in Latin, French, and English
respectively, were discovered too late for inclusion in the text. They
represent renderings of the same poem in the three languages, and are
preserved on the back of a Roll[1] in the Public Record Office,
containing a copy of the Ordinances of the fifth year of Edward II
(of which other copies exist in the British Museum, the Record Office,
and the Treasury at Canterbury). The poems in question are written on
the back of the Roll, towards the end, the Latin and French in parallel
columns, and the English below, five verses under the Latin, and four
under the French. They are preceded by a number of Latin recipes in
another hand, and a few in French follow. The handwriting of the poems
is smaller and neater than that of the Ordinances, or the Latin recipes,
but was ascribed by Hunter[2] to the time of Edward II, and may perhaps
be assigned to the fourteenth century. The French is fourteenth-century
Anglo-French, and the texts probably belong to that century, though this
copy of them may not have been made until after 1400.
A nineteenth-century transcript of the poems exists in the British
Museum, Addit. MS. 25478 (fol. 1-3), described in the Catalogue as
containing 'Transcripts of miscellaneous English poetry, with a few
Latin pieces, chiefly derived from MS. sources: xivth to xixth century'.
The binding is marked 'Collectanea Hunteriana', and the MS. was acquired
with various others of the Hunter collection in 1863. The handwriting
varies, and these three poems are not in Hunter's own hand. The
transcript is headed 'Copy of a Poem in Latin, French, and English,
which is written in a hand of the reign of Edward II, on the dorse of a
Roll which contains a copy of the ordinances of the fifth year of Edward
II, which are printed in the Statutes of the Realm I. 157-168'. The text
given below has been collated with this transcript, and variant readings
in the latter given in the footnotes under the name Hunter (H.).
The British Museum transcript was discovered by Miss Helen Sandison of
Bryn Mawr, U.S.A., who kindly acquainted me with her discovery, and was
of great assistance in the search for the original Roll, which was
eventually found in a bundle awaiting rearrangement at the Record
Office. A large stain on the original text has rendered a considerable
portion of the Latin and a few words in the French almost illegible, and
Hunter's transcript has left blanks at these points. Mr. S. C. Ratcliff,
of the Record Office, has given me much kind and courteous assistance in
deciphering the missing words, thanks to which I have been able to fill
up all the gaps, except that in verse 8, l. 3 of the Latin. Hunter's
text at this point runs as follows:--