"Foles al sam;
Sagh I never none so fare
Bote the soles of Gotham."

The oldest known copy of the _Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam_
was printed in 1630, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_, mentions an edition,
which he says was printed about 1568, by Henry Wikes, but he had never
seen it. But Mr. Halliwell (now Halliwell-Phillips), in his _Notices
of Popular English Histories_, cites one still earlier, which he
thinks was probably printed between 1556 and 1566: "Merie Tales of the
Mad Men of Gotam, gathered together by A.B., of Phisike Doctour.
[colophon:] Imprinted at London, in Flet-Stret, beneath the Conduit, at
the signe of S. John Evangelist, by Thomas Colwell, n.d. 12°, black
letter." The book is mentioned in _A Briefe and Necessary
Introduction_, etc., by E.D. (8vo, 1572), among a number of other
folk-books: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, Arthur of the Round
Table, Huon of Bourdeaux, Oliver of the Castle, The Four Sonnes of
Amond, The Witles Devices of Gargantua, Howleglas, Esop, Robyn Hoode,
Adam Bell, Frier Rushe, The Fooles of Gotham, and a thousand such
other."[4] And Anthony à Wood, in his _Athenæ Oxonienses_ (1691-2),
says it was "printed at London in the time of K. Hen. 8, in whose reign
and after it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by scholars and
gentlemen. Afterwards being often printed, [it] is now sold only on the
stalls of ballad-singers." It is likely that the estimation in which the
book was held "by scholars and gentlemen" was not a little due to the
supposition that "A.B., of Phisike Doctour," by whom the tales were said
to have been "gathered together," was none other than Andrew Borde, or
Boorde, a Carthusian friar before the Reformation, one of the physicians
to Henry VIII., a great traveller, even beyond the bounds of