Suddenly, on all sides, men clad in rags and armed filled the forest. Dogs bayed and dashed in pursuit of the stags. Four fierce fellows surrounded Lamme and Ulenspiegel and brought them into a clearing, in the middle of a brake, where they saw encamped there, among women and children, men in great numbers, armed diversely with swords, arbalests, arquebuses, lances, pikestaff, and reiter’s pistols.
Ulenspiegel, seeing them, said to them:
“Are ye the leafmen or Brothers of the Woods, that ye seem to live here in common to flee the persecution?”
“We are Brothers of the Woods,” replied an old man sitting beside the fire and frying some birds in a saucepan. “But who art thou?”
“I,” replied Ulenspiegel, “am of the goodly country of Flanders, a painter, a rustic, a noble, a sculptor, all together. And through the world in this wise I journey, praising things lovely and good and mocking loudly at all stupidity.”
“If thou hast seen so many countries,” said the ancient man, “thou canst pronounce: Schild ende Vriendt, buckler and friend, in the fashion of Ghent folk; if not, thou art a counterfeit Fleming and thou shalt die.”
Ulenspiegel pronounced: Schild ende Vriendt.
“And thou, big belly,” asked the ancient man, speaking to Lamme, “what is thy trade?”
Lamme replied:
“To eat and drink my lands, farms, fees, and revenues, to seek for my wife, and to follow in all places my friend Ulenspiegel.”