Short riddling stanzas of the kind, based upon the Latin phrases mentioned above, may have been popular in the thirteenth century, and this particular one was evidently known and used by the author of the _Song on the Times_.[21] The writer of the version preserved in MS. Harl. 913 seems to have been a more learned man, acquainted with poems like the Dialogues between _the Soul and the Body_, who elaborated the four lines of MS. Harl. 2253, and perhaps other verses of the same kind, into a poem of seven six-lined stanzas, the additional couplet often introducing a new idea precisely as in the case of the similarly expanded verse-form in MS. Porkington. Either this man or a later transcriber appears to have added the Latin rendering which accompanies the poem, and to have further exercised himself in varying the word-play. Heuser[22] points out that the mistakes in the MS. would support the view that the English text is a copy of an original in another dialect, and it is possible that the Latin version belongs to this MS. alone, since a second poem in the same MS. is accompanied by an unfinished translation into Latin. This theory as to the origin of the two texts of the A version receives further support from the fact that it also accounts most satisfactorily for the development and popularity of the B version. Apart from the play on the word _erthe_ and the similarity of the theme, there is only one point of close verbal connexion between the two versions. In MS. Harl. 913 (A) the sixth stanza runs as follows:-- Erþ gette on erþ gersom & gold, Erþ is þi moder, in erþ is þi mold. Erþ uppon erþ be þi soule hold; Er erþe go to erþe, bild þi long bold. Erþ bilt castles, and erþe bilt toures; Whan erþ is on erþe, blak beþ þe boures. In the B version, the rimes _gold_ : _mold_, _toures_ : _boures_, regularly recur in the third and fourth stanzas, and line 5 of the A text is preserved in slightly modified form in the first line of verse 3:-- (MS. Harl. 4486, vv. 3 and 4) Erthe apon erthe wynnethe castelles and towres. Then seythe erthe to erthe: ‘These bythe alle owres.’ When erthe apon erthe hath byggede vp his bowres, Then schalle erthe for the erthe suffre scharpe schowres. Erthe gothe apon erthe as molde apon molde. So goethe erthe apon erthe alle gleterynge in golde, Lyke as erthe unto erthe neuer go scholde, And ȝet schalle erthe into erthe rather then he wolde. In the Cambridge text the rime-words _towres_ : _bours_ are introduced twice over, representing both the versions given above:-- (ll. 63, 64) Erthe bygyth hallys & erthe bygith towres, When erth is layd in erth, blayke is his bours; as in the _A_ version; (ll. 5, 7) Erthe vpon erth has hallys & towris . . . But quan erth vpon erth has bygyd his bowres, as in the B version.