In Germany it was the custom (alluded to at page 34) for the priests or clerks to read these licenses to beg from the pulpit, that the congregation might know which of the poor people who waited at their doors were worthy of alms. Sometimes, as in the case of the DÜTZBETTERIN, or false “lying-in-woman,” an anecdote of whom is told here, the priests were deceived by counterfeit documents.
At page 17 reference is made to the wandering students who used to trudge over the country and sojourn for a time at any school charitable enough to take them in. These, in their journeys, often fell in with rogues and tramps, and sometimes joined them in their vagabond calling, in which case they obtained for themselves the title of KAMMESIERERS, or “Learned Beggars.” Now these same vagabond scholars were to be met with in this country in the time of Henry VIII,—and in Ireland, I believe, so late as the last century. Examining again the Act for Vagrants, 1531, we find that it was usual and customary for poor scholars from Oxford and Cambridge to tramp from county to county. The statute provided them with a document, signed by the commissary, chancellor, or vice-chancellor, which acted as their passport. When found without this license they were treated as vagrants, and whipped accordingly.
It is remarkable that many of the tricks and manœuvres to obtain money from the unthinking but benevolent people of Luther’s time should have been practised in this country at an early date, and that they should still be found amongst the arts to deceive thoughtless persons adopted by rogues and tramps at the present day. The stroller, or “Master of the Black Art,” described at page 19, is yet occasionally heard of in our rural districts. The simple farmer believes him to be weather and cattle wise, and should his crops be backward, or his cow “Spot,” not “let down her milk,” with her accustomed readiness, he crosses the fellow’s hand with a piece of silver, in order that things may be righted.
The WILTNERS, or finders of pretended silver fingers, noticed at page 45, are now-a-days represented by the “Fawney Riggers,” or droppers of counterfeit gold rings,—described in _Mayhew’s London Labour_, and other works treating of the ways of vagabonds.