The legend of the Assumption, according to ten Brink (Geschichte der engl. Litt. I, p. 331), had its origin in the second half of the 4th century. Tischendorf (Act. Apocr. p. xxxiv, Leipzig, 1866) believes a still earlier origin to be not impossible. The story had a wide circulation in the East. Besides the Greek versions we know (cf. F. Gierth, Engl. Stud. vii, pp. pp. 1-33) of three Syriac, one Arabic, and one Sahidic version. Even in Ethiopia there exists a similar tale (Journ. of Sacr. Lit. and Bibl. Rec., Jan. 1865, p. 48). From the orient the legend spread into the literatures of western Christendom. Tischendorf (as above, p. xliii.) gives a list of a dozen Latin manuscripts of the legend, and from these he offers critical editions of two versions, which, with Gierth, we may indicate as: (1) _Transitus Mariae_, #A# (Tischendorf, pp. 113 ff.) in Latin prose; (2) _Transitus Mariae_, #B#, a fuller version differing from #A# in some respects, notably in the absence of the scene in which Thomas appears. Other Latin versions are those published by Th. Graesse: (1) The section, _De assumtione beatae Mariae virginis in Jacobi a Voragine Legenda Aurea_,[I-23] ed. Th. Graesse, _Dresdae et Lipsiae_, 1846, pp. 504 ff., (2) _De modo assumtionis beatae Mariae_, published by Graesse, as above, pp. 517 ff. In French may be mentioned the version by Wace (_L’Établissement de la fête de la conception Nôtre-Dame dite la fête aux Normands_. Caen, 1842, or, in another edition, _Vie de la vierge Marie_, Tours, 1859). For account of other unpublished French versions cf. E. Stengel, _Mittheilungen aus franz. hss._, etc., Halle, 1873, pp. 20 ff. In German we may mention the version by Conrad v. Heimesfurt, about 1200 (HZ. viii, pp. 150 ff.). Our story in its present form seems to have made its first appearance in England in the French version, above mentioned, by Wace, in the second quarter of the 12th century. (Cf. however, _Assumptio sanctae Mariae virginis_, Blickling Homilies, E.E.T.S. 58, 63, 73.) Of an English version of the present form of the legend, for English hearers, we have no trace before the middle of the following century, from which it seems we are to infer that the legend remained the property of the French clericals about a century before coming into general circulation in the English-speaking world. This earliest English version of the story is the one of the present edition in short riming couplets.