It will thus be seen that the popular traditional version of the poem tended to become modified, and even corrupt, already in the fifteenth century, and that such modifications are usually more apparent in the later texts. It is also evident that individual transcribers felt themselves at liberty to expand the traditional version, and that many tried their hand at such variations on the original theme, but the striking absence of proof of relationship outside the seven stanzas of the normal version, as well as the frequent unimportant variations found in the common stanzas, seems to point clearly to the conclusion that the original was a popular poem of seven, or possibly only five, stanzas, widely known over England, and that the more simple and naïve of the seventeen texts extant are also more genuine, and nearer to the original. Many of the texts are accompanied by a short prefatory or concluding verse in English or Latin. The English verse-- _When lyffe is most loued, and deth is moste hated, Then dethe draweth his drawght and makyth man full naked_ occurs as a preface in MSS. Harl. 4486 and 1671, Lambeth, Laud, Rawl. P., and Egerton, and as a conclusion in Billyng’s text. The Latin _Memento homo quod cinis es et in cinerem reverteris_ occurs, in full or in part, in MSS. Harl. 4486, Egerton, Rawl. C., Lambeth, and Billyng, and _De terra plasmasti me_ in MSS. Harl. 1671, Lambeth, and Rawl. P. The two stanzas in rime royal on the _Procese of Dethe_ which immediately precede _Erthe upon Erthe_ in the Porkington MS. are transcribed as a separate poem, and if not separate, would rather belong to the preceding text, a translation of the Latin _Visio Philiberti_ in rime royal, than to _Erthe upon Erthe_. The latter poem often accompanies either a _Dance of Death_ or one of the numerous _Soul and Body_ dialogues, no doubt because of the similarity of the theme, but it is not necessary to regard these kindred poems as forming an essential part of each other. So in the Balliol MS., _Erthe upon Erthe_ is preceded by an eight-lined Latin stanza on the theme _vado mori_, which is probably part of a _Dance of Death_. Here again no basis for a grouping of the MSS. can be found.