ne study be as good as ours at
land. For Plato, to describe a silly, raw, ignorant fellow, compares him
to those that are bred on shipboard, as we would do one bred up in a
barrel, who never saw anything but through the bung-hole.

To tell you the short and the long of the matter, our fasting was most
hideous and terrible; for the first day we fasted on fisticuffs, the second
at cudgels, the third at sharps, and the fourth at blood and wounds: such
was the order of the fairies.

Chapter 5.II.

How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become
birds.

Having fasted as aforesaid, the hermit gave us a letter for one whom he
called Albian Camar, Master Aedituus of the Ringing Island; but Panurge
greeting him called him Master Antitus. He was a little queer old fellow,
bald-pated, with a snout whereat you might easily have lighted a
card-match, and a phiz as red as a cardinal's cap. He made us all very
welcome, upon the hermit's recommendation, hearing that we had fasted, as I
have told you.

When we had well stuffed our puddings, he gave us an account of what was
remarkable in the island, affirming that it had been at first inhabited by
the Siticines; but that, according to the course of nature--as all things,
you know, are subject to change--they were become birds.

There I had a full account of all that Atteius Capito, Paulus, Marcellus,
A. Gellius, Athenaeus, Suidas, Ammonius, and others had writ of the
Siticines and Sicinnists; and then we thought we might as easily believe
the transmutations of Nectymene, Progne, Itys, Alcyone, Antigone, Tereus,
and other birds. Nor did we think it more reasonable to doubt of the
transmogrification of the Macrobian children into swans, or that of the men
of Pallene in Thrace into birds, as soon as they had bathed themselves in
the Tritonic lake. After this the devil a word could we get out of him but
of birds and cages.

The cages were spacious, costly, magnificent, and of an admirable
architecture. The birds were large, fine, and neat accordingly, looking as
like the men in my country as one pea does like another; for they ate and
drank like men, muted like men, endued or digested like men, farted like
men, but stunk like devils; slept, billed, and trod their females like men,
but somewhat oftener: in short, had you seen and examined them from top to
toe, you would have laid your head to a turnip that they had been mere men.
However, they