ABSTRACT
There are two manuscripts: Bodley MS. Ashmole 44 (A) gives the text of 11. 1–722 and 846–5803; Trinity College, Dublin, MS. 213 (D) contains only 11. 678–3424 and 3485–553. The end of the poem is lost. The edited text is based on A, except for 11. 723–40, extant only in D. Both mss. are northern copies from the second half of the fifteenth century. D, which also contains an A-text of Piers Plowman, is from Durham; see Doyle (1982:99–100). There are traces of a NWMidl dialect behind the northernisms, and it is probable that the author, of whom nothing is known, came from Lanes.
