The name of Stroller disappeared, and the occupation of these possessionless rovers became to a certain degree free from the old defect; but the great society of swindlers maintained a certain organization. Their language also remained. The gibberish, of which many specimens remain to us from the latter end of the middle ages, shows already, before the demoralization of the people by the Hussite war, a full development of old German rogues' idioms. It consists for the greater part of Hebrew words as used by persons who were not themselves Jews; together with these are mingled some of the honoured treasures of the German language, beautiful old words, and again significant inventions of figurative expressions, for the sake of concealing the true sense of the speech by a deceptive figure: thus, windgap for mantle, broadfoot for goose. Few of their words lead us to expect an elevated disposition; the rough humour of desperadoes breaks out from many of them. The practice, like the language of these rogues, developed itself in greater refinement. The usual form in which the resident inhabitants were plundered was begging. The works of holiness of the old Church--an irrational alms-giving--had spread throughout Christendom an unwieldy mass of mendicancy. In the first century of German Christendom it is the subject of complaint of pious ecclesiastics. In churchyards and in public places lay the beggars, exposing horrible wounds, which were often artistically inflicted; they sometimes went naked through the country with a club, afterwards clothed, and with many weapons, and begged at every homestead for their children, or for the honour of their saints, or as slaves escaped from the Turkish galleys, for a vow, or for only a pound of wax, a silver cross, or a mass vestment. They begged also towards the erection of a church, producing letters and seals; they had much at heart to obtain special napkins for the priest, linen for the altar cloth, and broken plate for the chalice; they rolled about as epileptics, holding soap lather in their mouths. In like manner did the women wander about, some pretending to give birth to monsters (as for example a toad) which lived in solitude as miraculous creatures, and daily required a pound of meat. When a great festival was held they flocked together in troops. They formed a dangerous company, and even iron severity could scarcely keep them under restraint. Basle appears to have been one of their secret meeting-places; they had there their own special place of justice, and the famed "_Liber Vagatorum_" also, seems to have originated in that neighbourhood. This book, written by an unknown hand about 1500, contains, in rogues' language, a careful enumeration of the rogue classes and their tricks, and at the end a vocabulary of jargon. It was often printed; and Pamphilus Gengenbach of Basle rendered it into rhyme. It pleased Luther so well that he also