1. Some students invite Faust to accompany them to the Leipzig Fair, and after they have inspected the town and the University they come to a wine-cellar, where some draymen are endeavouring without success to roll out a huge barrel. Faust mocks their efforts, and they return his jeers with interest, but the owner of the barrel offers to make a present of the contents to whoever can lift it out. Faust goes into the cellar, sits astride the barrel as though it were a horse and rides out. The host has to keep his promise, and Faust shares the contents with his companions.
2. Faust was for some years at Erfurt and lectured at the University. On one occasion, when he is lecturing on Homer, the students request him to conjure up the ancient heroes of Greece. He promises to do so at his next lecture, which is consequently very fully attended. The heroes duly appear in their armour—Menelaus, Achilles, Hector, Priam, Alexander, Ulysses, Ajax, Agamemnon and others, followed by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, with the extremities of a man he is eating still projecting from between his teeth. The spectators are terrified, but Faust laughs and orders the spirits to go away again, which they all do with the exception of Polyphemus, who looks as though he would like to devour one or two of the students. However, he also is persuaded to retire, but the students do not ask Faust to repeat the experiment.
3. Faust offers to bring to light the lost comedies of Terence and Plautus, though only for a sufficient length of time to enable them to be copied. The theologians and members of the University council, however, think that there are enough books in existence from which the students can learn Latin, and in any case there is the possibility of the Devil inserting in the newly discovered works all kinds of poison and bad examples, and the disadvantage might outbalance the gain. So Faust is not given the opportunity this time of proving his skill.
4. While Faust is in Prague, a friend of his, who is giving a party in Erfurt, desires his presence, and presently there is a knock at the door and Faust is seen to have just alighted from his horse. He says he cannot stay long as he must be back in Prague on the morrow. He gets intoxicated, and asks the guests whether they would not like to try some foreign wines. He thereupon bores four holes in the table and puts plugs into them. Glasses are fetched, Faust draws the plugs and serves each man with the wine he desires. It appears that his horse, who is devouring all the oats in the stable and looking for more, is really Mephostophiles. Early in the morning Faust rides away, and the guests who accompany him to the door see his horse rise with him into the air.
5. Faust invites some friends to his lodging, and when they arrive there is neither food nor drink, fire nor smoke. Their host raps on the table with his knife, and a servant comes in. Faust asks, “How swift are you?” and the reply is, “Like an arrow.” “No,” says Faust, “you cannot serve me, go back whence you came.” He raps again, and another servant enters, who tells Faust that he is as swift as the wind. He also is sent away. A third servant is as swift as thought and is accepted by Faust, who orders him to bring food and drink for the feast. The goblets are put on the table empty, but Faust asks each of his guests what kind of wine or beer he would like, holds the goblet out of the window and draws it in again full of the desired liquor.
6. A famous Franciscan monk, named Dr. Kling, who was well acquainted with Dr. Martin Luther, endeavours to convert Faustus. But Faust declares it would be dishonourable to go back on his pact with the Devil, which he has signed with his own blood. “The Devil has honourably kept his part of the bargain, therefore I will keep mine.” The monk reports this conversation to the Rector and Council of the University, and Faust is compelled to quit Erfurt.
These stories are also to be found in a seventeenth-century manuscript chronicle of Thuringia and the town of Erfurt, based on an Erfurt Chronicle of the previous century which is now lost. The author of this earlier chronicle appears to have heard the anecdotes, in the year 1556, from a neighbour of the Franciscan monk who tried to convert Faust. The story of how Faust rode the barrel of wine out of the cellar is recorded in two paintings on the wall of Auerbach’s wine-cellar in Leipzig, which bear the date 1525, but are in reality no earlier than the seventeenth century. The wine-cellar itself was not built till 1530.
There were further editions of the Faust book in 1590 and 1592, as well as a rhymed version, which appeared at Tübingen in the winter of 1587-8. It is probably the authors of this book who are referred to in the complaint of the ducal commissioners to the senate of the University of Tübingen, which is recorded in the minutes of the senate on the 15th of April, 1588. The publisher and authors are ordered to be incarcerated for a couple of days, and sternly reprimanded.