It shall not be impertinent (my very good friends) to declare as I am bound by a Translator’s duty, to shew what these my Dutch friends and Students have imparted unto me, not for that I will be a King of your hearts to command you to believe, but that you may with the rest of the History conceive the common opinion of him in the vulgar’s belief here in Germany, as concerning such the like illusions before pretended. About the same time, the next year wherein Faustus was thus handled betwixt six and seven o’clock in the morning, the five and twentieth day of June, 1539, there chanced certain Scholars to the number of nine, and five other Merchants (called of them Copfhmen) two being English, to walk abroad to a little village within four English miles (which is about one of theirs) of Wittenberg called Shaftsburg to the intent to make merry, whither being come they were exceeding pleasant, as Dutchmen are, especially when they be at their good Beer, for they are men very impatient of thirst, wherewith the Italian mocks them saying: _Germani multos possunt tolerare labores, O vtinam possint tam bene ferre sitim._ Unto which they merrily answer: _Vt nos dura sitis, sic vos Venus improba vexat, Lex lata est Veneri Iulia, nulla mero._ So long they drank, that at last they came to be within a little of drunk, fetching over the _Green nine Muses_[45] so often at sundry draughts, till they began to be exceeding merry and pleasant, till it being time to depart, so they set out for Wittenberg, and being within a mile or such a matter of the City, they came to a thick Grove called of them the Phogelwald which is Bird’s Wood in English, a place somewhat delightsome above any thereabouts, situated upon a top of a very high Hill, but the arms of it spread themselves somewhat lower into the neighbour valleys and meadows, full of very fine Crystalline brooks and springs, which running through the large ranks of trees empty themselves into the Elve, a River which keeps his current by Wittenberg; in this place in a fair Summer sunshine day, gather together a great number of country maids, servants, and other of the female sex, which they call Phogels (Birds); unto them there resort in such-like days, a great number of scholars to meet with these Birds, which exercise Venery either for pleasure, but indeed seldom but for gain, with whom when they have danced a great while (after some odd tune, as after that which they call Robinson’s delight, but more truly a jest, though somewhat tolerable) some twenty or thirty or forty couples together, then here steps out one couple, and here another, and get them to such odd corners, as their continual practice doth make known; on the same day wherein this merry company were wandering, who if I should not much err, I durst say they were most deeply drunk, being a Sun-shining day and having no other way to pass to Wittenberg, but only by this Phogelwald, where they determined to be