_d_ 2. _the holy londe_: because Ireland was _par excellence_ 'the Land of the Saints'. _f._ I am obliged to Professor Carleton Brown for the information that this poem is found, with two additional stanzas, in MS. 18. 7. 21 of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and that the full text will be published shortly in his _Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century_. _f_ 4. _bere_ (OE. _bȳr_) riming with _fere_ (OE. _(ge)fēra_) indicates a South-Eastern composition. _g_ 1. _Scere Þorsday_: Maundy Thursday, the eve of Good Friday. _g_ 1-2. _aros_: _Iudas_: the alternative form _aras_ may have given the rime in the original, but it is not justifiable to accept this as certain and so to assume an early date of composition for the poem. Morsbach, _ME. Grammatik_, § 135, n. 4, quotes a number of parallel rimes with proper names, and the best explanation is that _o_ in _aros_ still represented a sound intermediate between _ā_ and _ǭ_, and so served as an approximate rime to _ā̆_ in proper names. _g_ 6. _cunesmen_: as _c_ and _t_ are hard to distinguish in some ME. hands, and are often confused by copyists, this reading is more likely than _tunesmen_ of the editors—Wright-Halliwell, Mätzner, Child, Cook (and _N. E. D._ s.v. _townsman_). For (1) _tunesman_ is a technical, not a poetical word. (2) In a poem remarkable for its terseness, _tunesmen_ reduces a whole line to inanity, unless the poet thinks of Judas quite precisely as a citizen of a town other than Jerusalem; and in the absence of any Biblical tradition it is unlikely that a writer who calls Pilate _þe riche Ieu_ would gratuitously assume that Judas was not a citizen of Jerusalem, where his sister lived. (3) Christ's words are throughout vaguely prophetic, and as Judas forthwith _imette wid is soster_—one of his kin—_cunesmen_ gives a pregnant sense. [I find the MS. actually has _cunesmen_, but leave the note, lest _tunesmen_ might appear to be better established.] _g_ 8. The repetition of ll. 8, 25, 30 is indicated in the MS. by 'ii' at the end of each of these lines, which is the regular sign for _bis_. _g_ 16. 'He tore his hair until it was bathed in blood.' The MS. has _top_, not _cop_. _g_ 24. _In him com ur Lord gon._ In the MS. _c'ist_ = _Crist_ has been erased after _Lord_. Note (1) the reflexive use of _him_, which is very common in OE. and ME. with verbs of motion, e.g. _Up him stod_ 27, 29; _Þau Pilatus him com_ 30; _Als I me rode_ XV _a_ 4; _The Kyng him rod_ XIV _c_ 61; cp. the extended use _ar þe coc him crowe_ 33, and notes to II 289, V 86: (2) the use of the infinitive (_gon_) following, and usually defining the sense of, a verb of motion, where Modern English always, and ME. commonly (e.g. _ȝede karoland_ I 117; _com daunceing_ II 298), uses the pres. p.: 'Our Lord came walking in'.