Orpen’s method shows us, at least, the exact state of the text from which he worked. There is still room, perhaps, for further conjectural emendation. For instance, in the lines-- Crandone pus a un barun, Ricard le flemmeng out anun-- where the editor is fairly baffled by ‘Crandone,’ perfect sense might at once be made by reading-- Slan donat pus a un barun, which would satisfy at once the conditions of metre, of locality, and of the context. So too, in the interesting Lacy charter printed on page 310, the editor might have detected in Adam de ‘Totipon,’ the Adam de ‘Futepoi’ of Giraldus, and the Adam de ‘Feipo’ of the poem: in records the name appears in both forms. The case of this man, one may add, is peculiarly interesting, because I have detected him as a knightly tenant of Hugh de Laci in England in the returns of 1166, in which he seems to be disguised as “Putipo.” He thus came, we see, to share in his lord’s greatness, becoming one of the leading ‘barons’ in his new dominion of Meath. It is necessary to explain that although this poem, in the form here preserved to us, dates only from about 1220 to 1230, it enshrines materials contemporary with the actual invasion and conquest. For it is based upon a narrative which seems to have closed not later than 1176, and for which the _trouvère_ or compiler of the poem was indebted to Maurice Regan, the interpreter, and, one might almost say, the diplomatic agent of king Dermot, whose matrimonial adventures were the _causa causans_ of the whole story. In giving to the poem the name of “the Song of Dermot and the Earl,” the editor has brought out the fact that its narrative is chiefly concerned with the doings of Dermot and his son-in-law, ‘Strongbow,’ as the earl of Pembroke has been commonly named.[341] It is not improbable that the original work was only carried down to the earl’s death in 1176. Mr. Orpen lays special stress on the fact that there are but “two allusions pointing to a much later date,” and claims it as “a remarkable fact that, with the exception of these two allusions ... there is nothing, so far as I have observed, pointing to a later date than 1177.” He would seem, however, to have overlooked an allusion to John de Curci’s subsequent troubles in Ulster in the lines: De curti out anun iohan, Ki pus isuffri meint [a]han.