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The versions
Version A is represented by the earliest datable text, Od8, a much later one, BLh17, and a single stanza entered by a reader of OSe15. The first of these is part of the personal miscellany of the courtier Sir William Haward, an assiduous collector of topical satire. While it cannot be assumed that Sir William entered material in strict order of acquisition, in this case "Signior Dildo" follows an item which is specifically marked as having been transcribed on 23 November 1673. The poem is in two sections, incongruously separated by "On the bible A Pindarique Ode." Significantly, the second is headed "Additions to Seigneur Dildoe." Taken together with the "Additions," which include some stanzas found in other integral texts, this is by far the longest version of the poem, and indicates that, once in circulation, it had continued to grow. The second source, BLh17, gives a shorter, differently ordered text of the same version without the division into two sections. This occurs in a manuscript anthology with a strong Jacobite tendency, copied no earlier than 1695.[5] Although neatly written, this collection is error-prone. Its marginalia, found throughout the volume, are mostly the creation of the scribe or compiler, who was not very well informed.
Despite the many variants between BLh17 and Od8, they agree consistently against the B version both at the verbal level and in some aspects of stanza sequence; however, all but four of the actual lines of the B version are to be found in one or the other text of the A version. BLh17 lacks only B
Of the B-version texts, all but BLh19 and 03 are found in anthologies of satires issued by the Cameron scriptorium and can be assumed to descend from the archive copy of that scriptorium. V90 and VAd43 belong to Cameron's "Restoration" group and Np42, Of15, OSe15 and Pt2 to his "Venus" group. The handful of anomalous agreements almost certainly arise from chance concurrence in change and the minor memorial contamination to be expected within a busy scribal organisation.[6] The printed text 03 may also derive from a scriptorium original—a matter considered below. The other B-version scribal text, BLh19, is found in a large anthology of satires written circa 1695 which displays a special hostility towards Mary of Modena.[7] Although similar in its layout and scope to the scriptorium anthologies, it is actually the product of another agency.
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