The Project Gutenberg eBook ofFlemish Legends

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofFlemish LegendsThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Flemish LegendsAuthor: Charles de CosterIllustrator: Albert DelstancheTranslator: Harold TaylorRelease date: October 8, 2011 [eBook #37668]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLEMISH LEGENDS ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Flemish LegendsAuthor: Charles de CosterIllustrator: Albert DelstancheTranslator: Harold TaylorRelease date: October 8, 2011 [eBook #37668]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Flemish Legends

Author: Charles de CosterIllustrator: Albert DelstancheTranslator: Harold Taylor

Author: Charles de Coster

Illustrator: Albert Delstanche

Translator: Harold Taylor

Release date: October 8, 2011 [eBook #37668]Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLEMISH LEGENDS ***

Flemish LegendsThe church of Haeckendover (page 40)The church of Haeckendover (page 40)Flemish LegendsByCharles de CosterWith eight woodcuts byAlbert DelstancheTranslated from the FrenchByHarold TaylorLondon: Chatto & WindusMCMXXPrinted in EnglandAt the Complete PressWest Norwood LondonContentsPageI.The Brotherhood of the Cheerful Countenance1II.The Three Sisters31III.Sir Halewyn43IV.Smetse Smee101IllustrationsThe Church of HaeckendoverFrontispieceThe Little Stone BoyFacing page 6The Man in White52Sir Halewyn in the Wood64The Song of the Head92Smetse caught by the Two Branches108In Smetse’s Garden126The Devil-King and the Sack150Translator’s NoteThere never was a book which needed less of an introduction than this one, unless it is that it should have an apology from the translator for his handling of so beautiful an original. But since so little is generally known of these Legends and their author a word of information may be demanded.Charles de Coster flourished in the middle part of the last century. He was brought up in the court of a great dignitary of the Roman Church, and intended for the aristocratic University of Louvain, but showed early his independent and democratic turn of mind by preferring the more popular University of Brussels, to which he made his own way. Here he fell in with a group of fellow-students and artistic enthusiasts which included Félicien Rops, with whom he was associated in a society calledLes Joyeux, and afterwards in a short-lived Review, to which they gave the name of that traditional Belgian figure of joyousness and high spirits,Uylenspiegel. It was in this that these Legends first appeared, written in the years 1856 and 1857, and soon afterwards published in book form.Belgian literature was not at that time in a very flourishing condition, and little general appreciation was shown of de Coster’s work, but it was hailed with enthusiasm by a few of the more discerning critics, and won him a place on a Royal Commission which was investigating mediæval state papers. After publishing another book,Contes brabançons, likewise based on the folk-lore of his country, he seems to have withdrawn into himself and led the life of a dreamer, wandering about among the peasants and burying himself in the wide countryside of Flanders, until he had completed his epic of the Spanish tyranny,Ulenspiegel, which has already been translated into English. None of these publications brought him any material recompense for his work, and he remaineda poor man to the end of his life, in constant revolt against what he called the horrible power of money.1The primitive stuff of these Legends is to be found scattered up and down, a piece here and a piece there, in the folk-lore of Brabant and Flanders. De Coster, who had an intense love of this folk-lore and at the same time, as he said, “that particular kind of madness which is needed for such writing,” set himself to give it a literary form. He has chosen to make that form so elaborate, and has worked his material to so fine a composition, that he must be considered to have produced an entirely original book. But he has not been unfaithful to his masters the people.Sir Halewyn, for instance, follows an old song. And the Faust-story ofSmetse Smee, the jovial and ingenious smith, who gets the better of his bargain with the devil in so wholly satisfactory a fashion, crops up in one form or another again and again.The Legends were written in the idiom of the sixteenth century, the period to which the latest and longest of them roughly belongs. I believe that no more perfect example ofpasticheexists in the language. But that is not of much interest to English readers, and I have made no attempt to reproduce the achievement. De Coster found modern French, with its rigidity of form, unsuitable to his subject and inapt to his genius. He seems to have had a mind so perfectly in tune with the Middle Ages that one may well believe that he found it actually more natural to write in the still fluid language of Rabelais than in that of his own day. The prose of the original is of arresting beauty, especially inSir Halewyn; which, with its peculiarly Flemish tale of faery and enchantment, still beauty and glowing hearths, and the sombreness of northern forests brooding over them, I feel to be the high-water mark of his achievement. At times it becomes so rhythmic that one can hardly decide whether it is prose or poetry. It is not difficult to believe Potvin’s report that de Coster spentan immense amount of pains on his work, sometimes doing a page twenty times over before he was content to let it go.De Coster has been spoken of as a mouthpiece of Protestantism. Protestant, of course, is the last word in the world to describe him. No one can have regretted much more than he the passing of that warm-hearted time before the Reformation. One has but to read the story of the building of the church at Haeckendover inThe Three Sisters, or the prayer of the girl Wantje to the Virgin in the tale of the hilariousBrotherhoodto see how far this is true. It is only inSmetse Smee, when he comes to the time of the Inquisition, that he bursts out with that stream of invective and monstrous mockery which made the Polish refugee Karski say of him, “Well roared, Fleming!” And even then it is Spain rather than Catholicism which is the centre of his attack, and Philip II who is his aiming-point.Above all and before all de Coster loved the simple peasant-people of his own land, with their frank interest in good things to eat and good beer to drink, their aptitude for quarrelling and their great hearts. All his chief portraits are painted from them. The old homely nobility of Flanders, such as were the people of Heurne in the tale ofHalewyn, he liked well enough, but he could not bear a rich man or a distant-mannered master of the Spanish type. A tale is told of him and his painter friend Dillens which may well stand as the key to his work. One day at Carnival-time they were in Ghent, and when the evening came Dillens asked what they should do. “Voir le peuple!” cried de Coster, “le peuple surtout! La bourgeoisie est la même partout! Va voir le peuple!”H. T.1His biography has been written by Charles Potvin.Charles de Coster; Sa Biographie. Weissenbruch; Brussels.

Flemish Legends

The church of Haeckendover (page 40)The church of Haeckendover (page 40)

The church of Haeckendover (page 40)

Flemish LegendsByCharles de CosterWith eight woodcuts byAlbert DelstancheTranslated from the FrenchByHarold TaylorLondon: Chatto & WindusMCMXX

Flemish Legends

ByCharles de CosterWith eight woodcuts byAlbert DelstancheTranslated from the FrenchByHarold Taylor

London: Chatto & WindusMCMXX

Printed in EnglandAt the Complete PressWest Norwood London

ContentsPageI.The Brotherhood of the Cheerful Countenance1II.The Three Sisters31III.Sir Halewyn43IV.Smetse Smee101

IllustrationsThe Church of HaeckendoverFrontispieceThe Little Stone BoyFacing page 6The Man in White52Sir Halewyn in the Wood64The Song of the Head92Smetse caught by the Two Branches108In Smetse’s Garden126The Devil-King and the Sack150

Translator’s NoteThere never was a book which needed less of an introduction than this one, unless it is that it should have an apology from the translator for his handling of so beautiful an original. But since so little is generally known of these Legends and their author a word of information may be demanded.Charles de Coster flourished in the middle part of the last century. He was brought up in the court of a great dignitary of the Roman Church, and intended for the aristocratic University of Louvain, but showed early his independent and democratic turn of mind by preferring the more popular University of Brussels, to which he made his own way. Here he fell in with a group of fellow-students and artistic enthusiasts which included Félicien Rops, with whom he was associated in a society calledLes Joyeux, and afterwards in a short-lived Review, to which they gave the name of that traditional Belgian figure of joyousness and high spirits,Uylenspiegel. It was in this that these Legends first appeared, written in the years 1856 and 1857, and soon afterwards published in book form.Belgian literature was not at that time in a very flourishing condition, and little general appreciation was shown of de Coster’s work, but it was hailed with enthusiasm by a few of the more discerning critics, and won him a place on a Royal Commission which was investigating mediæval state papers. After publishing another book,Contes brabançons, likewise based on the folk-lore of his country, he seems to have withdrawn into himself and led the life of a dreamer, wandering about among the peasants and burying himself in the wide countryside of Flanders, until he had completed his epic of the Spanish tyranny,Ulenspiegel, which has already been translated into English. None of these publications brought him any material recompense for his work, and he remaineda poor man to the end of his life, in constant revolt against what he called the horrible power of money.1The primitive stuff of these Legends is to be found scattered up and down, a piece here and a piece there, in the folk-lore of Brabant and Flanders. De Coster, who had an intense love of this folk-lore and at the same time, as he said, “that particular kind of madness which is needed for such writing,” set himself to give it a literary form. He has chosen to make that form so elaborate, and has worked his material to so fine a composition, that he must be considered to have produced an entirely original book. But he has not been unfaithful to his masters the people.Sir Halewyn, for instance, follows an old song. And the Faust-story ofSmetse Smee, the jovial and ingenious smith, who gets the better of his bargain with the devil in so wholly satisfactory a fashion, crops up in one form or another again and again.The Legends were written in the idiom of the sixteenth century, the period to which the latest and longest of them roughly belongs. I believe that no more perfect example ofpasticheexists in the language. But that is not of much interest to English readers, and I have made no attempt to reproduce the achievement. De Coster found modern French, with its rigidity of form, unsuitable to his subject and inapt to his genius. He seems to have had a mind so perfectly in tune with the Middle Ages that one may well believe that he found it actually more natural to write in the still fluid language of Rabelais than in that of his own day. The prose of the original is of arresting beauty, especially inSir Halewyn; which, with its peculiarly Flemish tale of faery and enchantment, still beauty and glowing hearths, and the sombreness of northern forests brooding over them, I feel to be the high-water mark of his achievement. At times it becomes so rhythmic that one can hardly decide whether it is prose or poetry. It is not difficult to believe Potvin’s report that de Coster spentan immense amount of pains on his work, sometimes doing a page twenty times over before he was content to let it go.De Coster has been spoken of as a mouthpiece of Protestantism. Protestant, of course, is the last word in the world to describe him. No one can have regretted much more than he the passing of that warm-hearted time before the Reformation. One has but to read the story of the building of the church at Haeckendover inThe Three Sisters, or the prayer of the girl Wantje to the Virgin in the tale of the hilariousBrotherhoodto see how far this is true. It is only inSmetse Smee, when he comes to the time of the Inquisition, that he bursts out with that stream of invective and monstrous mockery which made the Polish refugee Karski say of him, “Well roared, Fleming!” And even then it is Spain rather than Catholicism which is the centre of his attack, and Philip II who is his aiming-point.Above all and before all de Coster loved the simple peasant-people of his own land, with their frank interest in good things to eat and good beer to drink, their aptitude for quarrelling and their great hearts. All his chief portraits are painted from them. The old homely nobility of Flanders, such as were the people of Heurne in the tale ofHalewyn, he liked well enough, but he could not bear a rich man or a distant-mannered master of the Spanish type. A tale is told of him and his painter friend Dillens which may well stand as the key to his work. One day at Carnival-time they were in Ghent, and when the evening came Dillens asked what they should do. “Voir le peuple!” cried de Coster, “le peuple surtout! La bourgeoisie est la même partout! Va voir le peuple!”H. T.1His biography has been written by Charles Potvin.Charles de Coster; Sa Biographie. Weissenbruch; Brussels.

Translator’s Note

There never was a book which needed less of an introduction than this one, unless it is that it should have an apology from the translator for his handling of so beautiful an original. But since so little is generally known of these Legends and their author a word of information may be demanded.Charles de Coster flourished in the middle part of the last century. He was brought up in the court of a great dignitary of the Roman Church, and intended for the aristocratic University of Louvain, but showed early his independent and democratic turn of mind by preferring the more popular University of Brussels, to which he made his own way. Here he fell in with a group of fellow-students and artistic enthusiasts which included Félicien Rops, with whom he was associated in a society calledLes Joyeux, and afterwards in a short-lived Review, to which they gave the name of that traditional Belgian figure of joyousness and high spirits,Uylenspiegel. It was in this that these Legends first appeared, written in the years 1856 and 1857, and soon afterwards published in book form.Belgian literature was not at that time in a very flourishing condition, and little general appreciation was shown of de Coster’s work, but it was hailed with enthusiasm by a few of the more discerning critics, and won him a place on a Royal Commission which was investigating mediæval state papers. After publishing another book,Contes brabançons, likewise based on the folk-lore of his country, he seems to have withdrawn into himself and led the life of a dreamer, wandering about among the peasants and burying himself in the wide countryside of Flanders, until he had completed his epic of the Spanish tyranny,Ulenspiegel, which has already been translated into English. None of these publications brought him any material recompense for his work, and he remaineda poor man to the end of his life, in constant revolt against what he called the horrible power of money.1The primitive stuff of these Legends is to be found scattered up and down, a piece here and a piece there, in the folk-lore of Brabant and Flanders. De Coster, who had an intense love of this folk-lore and at the same time, as he said, “that particular kind of madness which is needed for such writing,” set himself to give it a literary form. He has chosen to make that form so elaborate, and has worked his material to so fine a composition, that he must be considered to have produced an entirely original book. But he has not been unfaithful to his masters the people.Sir Halewyn, for instance, follows an old song. And the Faust-story ofSmetse Smee, the jovial and ingenious smith, who gets the better of his bargain with the devil in so wholly satisfactory a fashion, crops up in one form or another again and again.The Legends were written in the idiom of the sixteenth century, the period to which the latest and longest of them roughly belongs. I believe that no more perfect example ofpasticheexists in the language. But that is not of much interest to English readers, and I have made no attempt to reproduce the achievement. De Coster found modern French, with its rigidity of form, unsuitable to his subject and inapt to his genius. He seems to have had a mind so perfectly in tune with the Middle Ages that one may well believe that he found it actually more natural to write in the still fluid language of Rabelais than in that of his own day. The prose of the original is of arresting beauty, especially inSir Halewyn; which, with its peculiarly Flemish tale of faery and enchantment, still beauty and glowing hearths, and the sombreness of northern forests brooding over them, I feel to be the high-water mark of his achievement. At times it becomes so rhythmic that one can hardly decide whether it is prose or poetry. It is not difficult to believe Potvin’s report that de Coster spentan immense amount of pains on his work, sometimes doing a page twenty times over before he was content to let it go.De Coster has been spoken of as a mouthpiece of Protestantism. Protestant, of course, is the last word in the world to describe him. No one can have regretted much more than he the passing of that warm-hearted time before the Reformation. One has but to read the story of the building of the church at Haeckendover inThe Three Sisters, or the prayer of the girl Wantje to the Virgin in the tale of the hilariousBrotherhoodto see how far this is true. It is only inSmetse Smee, when he comes to the time of the Inquisition, that he bursts out with that stream of invective and monstrous mockery which made the Polish refugee Karski say of him, “Well roared, Fleming!” And even then it is Spain rather than Catholicism which is the centre of his attack, and Philip II who is his aiming-point.Above all and before all de Coster loved the simple peasant-people of his own land, with their frank interest in good things to eat and good beer to drink, their aptitude for quarrelling and their great hearts. All his chief portraits are painted from them. The old homely nobility of Flanders, such as were the people of Heurne in the tale ofHalewyn, he liked well enough, but he could not bear a rich man or a distant-mannered master of the Spanish type. A tale is told of him and his painter friend Dillens which may well stand as the key to his work. One day at Carnival-time they were in Ghent, and when the evening came Dillens asked what they should do. “Voir le peuple!” cried de Coster, “le peuple surtout! La bourgeoisie est la même partout! Va voir le peuple!”H. T.

Charles de Coster flourished in the middle part of the last century. He was brought up in the court of a great dignitary of the Roman Church, and intended for the aristocratic University of Louvain, but showed early his independent and democratic turn of mind by preferring the more popular University of Brussels, to which he made his own way. Here he fell in with a group of fellow-students and artistic enthusiasts which included Félicien Rops, with whom he was associated in a society calledLes Joyeux, and afterwards in a short-lived Review, to which they gave the name of that traditional Belgian figure of joyousness and high spirits,Uylenspiegel. It was in this that these Legends first appeared, written in the years 1856 and 1857, and soon afterwards published in book form.

Belgian literature was not at that time in a very flourishing condition, and little general appreciation was shown of de Coster’s work, but it was hailed with enthusiasm by a few of the more discerning critics, and won him a place on a Royal Commission which was investigating mediæval state papers. After publishing another book,Contes brabançons, likewise based on the folk-lore of his country, he seems to have withdrawn into himself and led the life of a dreamer, wandering about among the peasants and burying himself in the wide countryside of Flanders, until he had completed his epic of the Spanish tyranny,Ulenspiegel, which has already been translated into English. None of these publications brought him any material recompense for his work, and he remaineda poor man to the end of his life, in constant revolt against what he called the horrible power of money.1

The primitive stuff of these Legends is to be found scattered up and down, a piece here and a piece there, in the folk-lore of Brabant and Flanders. De Coster, who had an intense love of this folk-lore and at the same time, as he said, “that particular kind of madness which is needed for such writing,” set himself to give it a literary form. He has chosen to make that form so elaborate, and has worked his material to so fine a composition, that he must be considered to have produced an entirely original book. But he has not been unfaithful to his masters the people.Sir Halewyn, for instance, follows an old song. And the Faust-story ofSmetse Smee, the jovial and ingenious smith, who gets the better of his bargain with the devil in so wholly satisfactory a fashion, crops up in one form or another again and again.

The Legends were written in the idiom of the sixteenth century, the period to which the latest and longest of them roughly belongs. I believe that no more perfect example ofpasticheexists in the language. But that is not of much interest to English readers, and I have made no attempt to reproduce the achievement. De Coster found modern French, with its rigidity of form, unsuitable to his subject and inapt to his genius. He seems to have had a mind so perfectly in tune with the Middle Ages that one may well believe that he found it actually more natural to write in the still fluid language of Rabelais than in that of his own day. The prose of the original is of arresting beauty, especially inSir Halewyn; which, with its peculiarly Flemish tale of faery and enchantment, still beauty and glowing hearths, and the sombreness of northern forests brooding over them, I feel to be the high-water mark of his achievement. At times it becomes so rhythmic that one can hardly decide whether it is prose or poetry. It is not difficult to believe Potvin’s report that de Coster spentan immense amount of pains on his work, sometimes doing a page twenty times over before he was content to let it go.

De Coster has been spoken of as a mouthpiece of Protestantism. Protestant, of course, is the last word in the world to describe him. No one can have regretted much more than he the passing of that warm-hearted time before the Reformation. One has but to read the story of the building of the church at Haeckendover inThe Three Sisters, or the prayer of the girl Wantje to the Virgin in the tale of the hilariousBrotherhoodto see how far this is true. It is only inSmetse Smee, when he comes to the time of the Inquisition, that he bursts out with that stream of invective and monstrous mockery which made the Polish refugee Karski say of him, “Well roared, Fleming!” And even then it is Spain rather than Catholicism which is the centre of his attack, and Philip II who is his aiming-point.

Above all and before all de Coster loved the simple peasant-people of his own land, with their frank interest in good things to eat and good beer to drink, their aptitude for quarrelling and their great hearts. All his chief portraits are painted from them. The old homely nobility of Flanders, such as were the people of Heurne in the tale ofHalewyn, he liked well enough, but he could not bear a rich man or a distant-mannered master of the Spanish type. A tale is told of him and his painter friend Dillens which may well stand as the key to his work. One day at Carnival-time they were in Ghent, and when the evening came Dillens asked what they should do. “Voir le peuple!” cried de Coster, “le peuple surtout! La bourgeoisie est la même partout! Va voir le peuple!”

H. T.

1His biography has been written by Charles Potvin.Charles de Coster; Sa Biographie. Weissenbruch; Brussels.

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