Schott, in his work, finds analogy between the various adventures of Bakâla, and the course of the sun through the months of the year; but it is foreign to our present purpose to enter upon such a speculation. Yet, as a curious exemplification of the love of trickery to be found among all races, this Wallachian Owlglass is worthy of mention.
_Works akin to the Eulenspiegel literature._
Although the Eulenspiegel folk-book has become the best known of the special class of books in which the middle age took such pleasure, there are many other compositions of a kindred nature worthy of mention, and of these I shall here describe the most important. The first on which any remark is necessary is the celebrated legend of Salomon and Marcolphus, which, in Latin, German, Anglo-Saxon, and French, has survived to the present time. Marcolphus is a jester in a more sober sense than is Owlglass; the jests of the former, though some of them are analogous to those of the latter, rarely touch upon the humourous. They are capable of application to far more serious things, to matters of speculative philosophy and science. Luther, for instance, applied a story of Marcolphus in reproof of persons who shut their eyes to the good, but afterwards were compelled, whether they would or no, to behold the evil.[29] But the Marcolphus legend is an exemplification rather of the combats of wit and wisdom common to the earlier part of the middle age, than a vivid reflex, as is the Owlglass, of the manners and customs of the time to which it belongs. One story borrowed from the Marcolphus, or from Morlini, at an early period, appears in Owlglass, being the second adventure in this edition, p. 3.
The _Narrenschiff_ (“Ship of Fools”) of Sebastian Brandt was published in 1494. It is also called the _Welt Spiegel_, or “World Mirror,” and it enjoyed a great and deserved reputation in its time, but was far too pedantic and tiresome to survive to the present age, or be profitable now. A few remarks upon it, extracted from Hallam, will be found in the Preface.
Murner himself published a satirical work in 1517, entitled the _Schelmenzunft_ (“Corporation of Knaves”), but from a want of entirety it has fallen into little repute. So also the _Gäuchmatt_ has been forgotten, while Owlglass, published in the same year (1519), will live a companion to many.