The people in the middle ages, as well as its superiors, had its comic literature and legend. Legend was the literature especially of the peasant, and in it the spirit of burlesque and satire manifested itself in many ways. Simplicity, combined with vulgar cunning, and the circumstances arising out of the exercise of these qualities, presented the greatest stimulants to popular mirth. They produced their popular heroes, who, at first, were much more than half legendary, such as the familiar spirit, Robin Goodfellow, whose pranks were a source of continual amusement rather than of terror to the simple minds which listened to those who told them. These stories excited with still greater interest as their spiritual heroes became incarnate, and the auditors were persuaded that the perpetrators of so many artful acts of cunning and of so many mischievous practical jokes, were but ordinary men like themselves. It was but a sign or symbol of the change from the mythic age to that of practical life. One of the earliest of these stories of mythic comedy transformed into, or at least presented under the guise of, humanity, is that of Brother Ruth. Although the earliest version of this story with which we are acquainted dates only from the beginning of the sixteenth century,[73] there is no reason for doubt that the story itself was in existence at a much more remote period. [73] This earliest known version is in German verse, and was printed in 1515. An English version, in prose, was printed in 1620, and is reprinted in Thoms's "Collection of Early Prose Romances."