The study focuses on the largely neglected anonymous flysheet »Der gestryfft Schwitzer Baur«, printed in 1522 by Pamphilus Gengenbach in Basel. Following an outline of the conditions governing the production and reception of the flysheet, the main part of the book provides a rhetorical analysis of the text with reference to homiletic traditions, and an interpretation of the title woodcut in the context of the pictorial traditions operative in it. Lay education, the relations between German and Latin, Balaam's ass in word and image, the metaphorical use of the word gestryfft (literally 'striped') - these are the central topics of the flysheet, discussed here in a broad literary and culture-historical context (15th-17th century).