It is quite out of the question to suppose these Southern works, with their very irregular use of alliteration and metre, to have had any influence on the metrical form of the very numerous alliterative poems written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Midland and Northern districts of England. It is, however, not at all likely that alliterative poetry should have sprung up there without any medium of tradition, and that it should have returned to the strict forms of the Old English models. Nor can we assume that it was handed down by means of oral tradition only on the part of the minstrels from Old English times down to the fourteenth century. The channel of tradition of the genuine alliterative line must be sought for in documents which for the most part have been lost. A few small remnants, however, have been preserved, viz. a charm in a MS. of the twelfth century (cf. Zupitza, _Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum_, xxxi. 49), a short poem, entitled 'Ten Abuses', belonging to the same period (E. E. T. S. 49, p. 184), a prophecy of five lines contained in the chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough (_Rerum Britannicarum Scriptores_, 49, ii. 139), finally a prophecy ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune (E.E. T. S., vol. 61, xviii, _Thom. of Erc._, ed. by A. Brandl, p. 26). But these pieces, treated by Prof. Luick in Paul's _Grundriss_, ed. 2, II. ii, p. 160, are either too short or are too uncertain in text to admit of our making definite conclusions from them. But from the middle of the fourteenth century onward we have a large number of poems composed in regular alliterative verse, e.g. _King Alisaunder_ (Als.) and _William of Palerne_ (W.), both in E. E. T. S., Extra-Ser. No. 1; _Joseph of Arimathie_ (J.A.), E. E.T. S. 44; _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ (Gr.), E.E. T. S. 4; _Piers Plowman_ (P. P.), by W. Langland, E. E. T. S., Nos. 17, 28, 30, 38, 54; _Pierce the Plowman's Crede_ (P. P. Cr.), E. E. T. S. 30; _Richard the Redeles_ (R. R.), E. E. T. S. 54; _The Crowned King_ (Cr. K.), ibid.; _The Destruction of Troy_, E. E.T. S. 39, 56; _Morte Arthure_, E. E. T. S. 8; _Cleanness_ and _Patience_, E. E. T. S. 1; _The Chevalere Assigne_, E. E.T. S., Extra-Ser. 6; and others of the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries: see Prof. W. W. Skeat's list in 'Bishop Percy's Folio MS.', London, 1867 (ed. Furnivall and Hales), vol. iii, p. xi, and many recent publications of the Early English Text Society.