It will be seen that the Latin and French versions do not correspond exactly with the English text, the French in particular being a mere paraphrase of it, but this was, no doubt, largely due to the exigencies of the rime. The French text has ten stanzas as against nine in the English poem, and the Latin has eleven, the additional stanzas being an expansion of the theme after the manner of Anglo-Latin poems of the kind. It is evident both from the variant attempts at expansion of the text in the Latin and French, and from the greater freshness and more skilful use of the play on the word _erthe_ of the English text, that the latter is the original, and this supports the view already expressed (Introd. p. xxxiii) as to the relation of the English and Latin versions in MS. Harl. 913. It is improbable, at least, that the _Erthe upon Erthe_ poems should all be derived from two Latin poems, the differences between which are too great to admit of a common original, but which were both translated into English verse, and became, in course of time, modified and popularized. On the other hand, the fact that one fourteenth-century poem of the kind had been supplied with a Latin rendering might easily account for an attempt at Latin and French translations in the case of a second, and there seems to be reason for believing that the author of the latter text was acquainted with the poem in MS. Harl. 913. As has been already noted in the Introduction (p. xxxii), the first line of the English version corresponds in idea with that of the text in MS. Harl. 913: Whan erþ haþ erþ iwanne wiþ wow. and in actual wording with that of the _Song on the Times_: When erthe hath erthe i-gette.