Otherwise no verbal connexion can be traced with any of the texts of _Erthe upon Erthe_, though the phrase _eorthe on eorthe_ recurs four times, and there is, of necessity, some similarity of treatment and idea. Thus the remainder of verse 1 contains a reference to the destruction by worms, mentioned in MS. Harl. 913, v. 2, and in the Cambridge text, vv. 7 and 13, as well as to the proverb that the dead are soon forgotten, cf. MS. Harl. 913, v. 4 (Introd. p. xxxi); verse 5 exhorts man to think of death, as does v. 6 of the B Version; and the poem ends with a prayer, as do MSS. Harl. 4486, Lambeth, Laud, Titus, and Rawl. P., as well as Rawl. C., and the Cambridge text. But the wording, and, in the two latter cases, the treatment, is different, and the general similarity is less than might he expected from the triteness of the theme. Both the A and the B Version lay stress on the contrast between man’s present earthly glory and his future mingling with the dust, whereas the text in the Appendix dwells on the inevitableness of death, the pains of death, and the future judgement (only mentioned here and in MS. Harl. 913). The poem appears to represent an individual treatment of the subject, suggested perhaps by the text in MS. Harl. 913, with its Latin rendering, and possibly also influenced by the _Song on the Times_ in the same MS. It may be regarded as being ultimately based, like MS. Harl. 913, on the short stanzas current at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and as furnishing additional evidence of the early popularity of the theme, a popularity which gave rise at first to individual poems like this and MS. Harl. 913, and later to the repetition and expansion of one common type as in the B Version. But, unlike MS. Harl. 913, this text stands apart from the more popular types of the poem, and has no connexion with either the B Version or the Cambridge text. It must therefore have been written before the short normal type of the B Version became current, and probably before it took shape as a poem of several stanzas, that is before 1400. The want of close connexion between it and the more usual types of the poem given above, makes the omission of it from the text the less to be regretted, since it represents a side-issue rather than a link in the development of the poem as here treated. [Footnote 1: Ex^r. K. R. Parl. Proceedings, Bdle. 1 (Old No. 645/21).] [Footnote 2: Joseph Hunter, the antiquary (1783-1861), Sub-Commissioner of the Public Records 1833, Assistant-Keeper of the Records 1838.] [Footnote 3: MS. _aterrens_ as one word.] [Footnote 4: MS. _wlt_.] [Footnote 5: this word is very obscure, and is omitted by Hunter; portions of _nt_ and the second _t_ can be seen.] [Footnote 6: H. _b^{i}reþ_.] [Footnote 7: H. _luþ_.] [Footnote 8: the MS. has a gap after _allewey_ with space for a word of five or six letters, but there is no erasure nor trace of any omission.]