17. The Maitland MS. Pepysian Library, Magd. Coll. Cambr., MS. 2553, p. 338 (c. 1555-1585). Seven stanzas in the Lowland Scots dialect, with the ascription ‘quod Marsar’. Thomas Pinkerton published portions of the MS. in his _Ancient Scottish Poems never before in print . . . from the MS. Collections of Sir Richard Maitland_ (London, 1786), but omitted _Eird upon Eird_. Not printed before. 18. The Reidpeth MS. Cambridge Univ. Libr. Ll. 5. 10, fol. 43, v^o, copied 1622-1623 ‘a me Joanne Reidpeth’. Seven stanzas, probably transcribed from the Maitland MS., but concluding ‘quod Dumbar’. Not printed before. MS. of the C Version: The Cambridge Text. Cambr. Univ. Libr. Ii. 4. 9, fol. 67, r^o (fifteenth century). Eighty-two lines comprising twenty-two or twenty-three stanzas. The text is followed by a coloured picture of a young knight, standing on a hill with a skeleton below. A scroll proceeding from the knight has the words: _Festina tempus et memento finis_, while one proceeding from the skeleton runs: _In omni opere memorare nouissima et in eternum non peccabis_. Printed by Heuser, _Kildare-Gedichte_, p. 213. THE #A# VERSION. The A version exists in two forms, one a short popular stanza of four lines (MS. Harl. 2253), apparently of the nature of a riddle, the other a longer poem of seven English and seven Latin stanzas (MS. Harl. 913), each English verse being followed by its Latin equivalent. The metrical form of the Latin verses is one often used in Latin poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a six-lined stanza, rimed _aaaabb_, with the rhythm of the well-known _méum ést propósitúm_ | _ín tabérna móri._ The English verses are also in the form of a six-lined stanza _aaaabb_, but the first four lines have the same loose four-stress rhythm as the lines in MS. Harl. 2253, and the concluding couplet is on the principle of the septenarius. Both the English and the Latin lines rime at the caesura as well as at the end of the line, but this is less uniformly the rule in the English verses. There is close verbal connexion between the four lines in MS. Harl. 2253, and the opening lines of the longer poem, as will appear from a comparison of the two:-- _MS. Harl._ 2253. Erþe toc of erþe erþe wyþ woh erþe oþer erþe to þe erþe droh erþe leyde erþe in erþene þroh þo heuede erþe of erþe erþe ynoh _MS. Harl._ 913. whan erþ haþ erþ . iwonne wiþ wow þan erþ mai of erþ . nim hir inow erþ vp erþ . falliþ fol frow erþ toward erþ . delful him drow. of erþ þou were makid . _and_ mon þou art ilich in on erþ awaked . þe pore _and_ þe riche.