January 1826.
	In the MS I poetry anthology, Margaret Ruskin wrote “Jan 1826” at the end of “The Needless Alarm,” the fourth poem in the anthology, and before “On Papa’s Leaving Home,” the fifth poem. Immediately below this, she drew a rule, followed by “this book begun about Sept or Oct 1826 / finished about Jany 1827” (see Facsimile). Since the latter comment clearly refers to the whole of MS I, W. G. Collingwood took the preceding date, “Jan 1826,” as applying to “The Needless Alarm” in particular and thus as identifying Ruskin’s earliest dated verse known to the editor (Poems [4o,1891], 1:xxii; Poems [8o, 1891], 1:viii).
	In the Library Edition, E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn disagreed, ascribing priority either to “When furious up from mines the water pours,” which is “poem I” in the MS I poetry anthology, or to “Ragland Castle,” which is the first poem in another anthology entitled “poetry discriptive” in MS III (Ruskin, Works, 2:255n; see “Wales” [poem]). “Ragland Castle,” however, more likely belongs to the second half of 1827, when the family visited Raglan and other sites in Wales. Moreover, the earlier date ascribed to “When furious up from mines the water pours” turns on elaborate reasoning that defies facts. The latter argument assumes, first, that Margaret’s note “Jan 1826” refers to all four poems preceding the note, not just to “The Needless Alarm”; second, that the first poem of this group to be fair-copied—“When furious up from mines the water pours,” or “poem I”—must necessarily have been the first composed; and, third, that Margaret’s date “Jan 1826,” according to the editors, “seems to be the date of the note, and not of any one of the verses in particular.” That is, in this view, “Jan 1826” applies to the note that follows, “this book begun about Sept or Oct 1826 / finished about Jany 1827.” Thus, this argument entails a discrepancy in dates, since the editors hazard that “perhaps, writing at the beginning of a new year, Mrs. Ruskin made the common error of not altering the old year’s date”—writing, that is, “Jan 1826,” but intending “Jan 1827” (Ruskin, Works, 2:255n).1
	Since Cook and Wedderburn’s reasoning depends on overruling what Margaret actually wrote, Collingwood’s interpretation seems more convincing—namely, that the date applies to “The Needless Alarm” but not necessarily to all four of the poems preceding the note. While “The Needless Alarm” must have been fair-copied “about Jany 1827” along with the other verse at the end of MS I, Margaret would have known if the poem had been composed a year earlier than the others (and If that was the case, she may have remembered the date because “The Needless Alarm” was the first—or first surviving—of Ruskin’s New Year’s poems; see Discussion). Moreover, this instance of a parent’s annotating a poem with a date earlier than surrounding poems is not unique, occurring also in MS III (see “Glen of Glenfarg”: Date), and. in that instance. Cook and Wedderburn accept, inconsistently, the parent’s authority. Finally, it seems implausible that Margaret would have written 1826 for 1827 without noticing the error, since her note about the date of the whole of MS I (which is unquestioned) is placed immediately below.
	Without following Cook and Wedderburn in their argument for dating “The Needless Alarm” to some time after “When furious up from mines the water pours,” one might, however, accept their suggestion that Margaret intends “Jan 1826” to refer to all four poems preceding her note. This possibility is raised in dating the other three poems—“When furious up from mines the water pours,” “On Scotland,” and “The Defiance of War”—but, again, the interpretation supplants a more obvious and convincing explanation. Collingwood associated one poem in the MS I poetry anthology, “On Scotland,” along with another, “Glen of Glenfarg,” with the family’s visit to Scotland in 1826, which he assumed to have started “about the middle of May” (Poems [4o,1891], 1:xxiii; Poems [8o,1891], 1:ix). We now know, however, that this journey was taken later in that year—a fact consistent with the placement of “On Scotland” toward the end of MS I, which was “finished about Jany 1827.” All the evidence falls into place if Collingwood’s original interpretation is accepted—namely, that “The Needless Alarm” is a year older than its surrounding poems. This conclusion is also corroborated by internal evidence of the poem’s sources (see Discussion).