Such is, in mere outline, the story of Brother Rush, which was gradually enlarged by the addition of new incidents. But the people wanted a hero who presented more of the character of reality, who, in fact, might be recognised as one of themselves; and such heroes appear to have existed at all times. They usually represented a class in society, and especially that class which consisted of idle sharpers, who lived by their wits, and which was more numerous and more familiarly known in the middle ages than at the present day. Folly and cunning combined presented a never-failing subject of mirth. This class of adventurers first came into print in Germany, and it is there that we find its first popular hero, to whom they gave the name of Eulenspiegel, which means literally "the owl's mirror," and has been since used in German in the sense of a merry fool. Tyll Eulenspiegel, and his story, are supposed to have belonged to the fourteenth century, though we first know them in the printed book of the commencement of the sixteenth, which is believed to have come from the pen of the well-known popular writer, Thomas Murner, of whom I shall have to speak more at length in another chapter. The popularity of this work was very great, and it was quickly translated into French, English, Latin, and almost every other language of Western Europe. In the English version the name also was translated, and appears under the form of Owleglass, or, as it often occurs with the superfluous aspirate, Howleglass.[74] According to the story, Tyll Eulenspiegel was the son of a peasant, and was born at a village called Kneitlingen, in the land of Brunswick. The story of his birth may be given in the words of the early English version, as a specimen of its quaint and antiquated language:-- "Yn the lande of Sassen, in the vyllage of Ruelnige, there dwelleth a man that was named Nicholas Howleglas, that had a wife named Wypeke, that lay a childbed in the same wyllage, and that chylde was borne to christening; and named Tyell Howleglass. And than the chyld was brought into a taverne, where the father was wyth his gosseppes and made good chere. Whan the mydwife had wel dronke, she toke the childe to bere it home, and in the wai was a litle bridg over a muddy water. And as the mydwife would have gone over the lytle brydge, she fel into the mudde with the chylde, for she had a lytel dronk to much wyne, for had not helpe come quickly, the had both be drowned in the mudde. And whan she came home with the childe, the made a kettle of warm water to be made redi, and therin they washed the child clen of the mudde. And thus was Howleglas thre tymes in one dai cristened, once at the churche, once in the mudde, and once in the warm water."