Another class of fools is seen engaged in ridiculous occupations, such as pouring water into wells; bearing the world on their shoulders; measuring the globe; or weighing heaven and earth in the balance.  Still others despoil their fellows.  Wine merchants introducing salt-petre, bones, mustard, and sulphur into barrels, the horse-dealer padding the foot of a lame horse, men selling inferior skins for good fur, and other cheats with false weights, short measure, and light money, prove that the vices of the modern age are not novelties.  Other allegorical pictures and verses describe the mutability of fortune, where a wheel, guided by a gigantic hand outstretched from the sky, is adorned with three asses, wearing of course the cap and bells.

The best German editions of this book are by Zarneke (Leipsic, 1854), and Goedecke (1872).  It was translated into Latin by Locker in 1497, into English by Henry Watson as ’The Grete Shyppe of Fooles of the Worlde’ (1517); and by Alexander Barclay in 1509.  The best edition of Barclay’s adaptation, from which the extracts below are drawn, was published by T.H.  Jamieson (Edinburgh, 1874).

     THE UNIVERSAL SHYP

     Come to, Companyons:  ren:  tyme it is to rowe: 
       Our Carake fletis[6]:  the se is large and wyde
     And depe Inough:  a pleasaunt wynde doth blowe. 
       Prolonge no tyme, our Carake doth you byde,
       Our felawes tary for you on every syde. 
     Hast hyther, I say, ye folys[7] naturall,
     Howe oft shall I you unto my Navy call?

     Ye have one confort, ye shall nat be alone: 
       Your company almoste is infynyte;
     For nowe alyve ar men but fewe or none
       That of my shyp can red hym selfe out quyte[8]. 
       A fole in felawes hath pleasour and delyte. 
     Here can none want, for our proclamacion
     Extendyth farre:  and to many a straunge nacyon.

     Both yonge and olde, pore man, and estate: 
       The folysshe moder:  hir doughter by hir syde,
     Ren to our Navy, ferynge to come to[o] late. 
       No maner of degre is in the worlde wyde,
       But that for all theyr statelynes and pryde
     As many as from the way of wysdome tryp
       Shall have a rowme and place within my shyp.

     My folysshe felawes therfore I you exort
       Hast to our Navy, for tyme it is to rowe: 
     Nowe must we leve eche sympyll[9] haven and porte,
       And sayle to that londe where folys abound and flow;
       For whether we aryve at London or Bristowe,
     Or any other Haven within this our londe,
     We folys ynowe[10] shall fynde alway at honde....

     Our frayle bodyes wandreth in care and payne
       And lyke to botes troubled with tempest sore
     From rocke to rocke cast in this se mundayne,
       Before our iyen beholde we ever more
       The deth of them that passed are before. 
     Alas mysfortune us causeth oft to rue
     Whan to vayne thoughtis our bodyes we subdue.