Please click here to leave an anniversary message (in any language you choose). You do not need to be a member of Lowlands-L to do so. In fact, we would be more than thrilled to receive messages from anyone. Click here to read what others have written so far.
What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
ll right, so I haven’t yet introduced myself, and here I go catching up on it.
My name is Arend Victorie. I was born on August 28, 1952, in Tiendeveine (Dutch Tiendeveen), a small town on the fen of Southwestern Drenthe. When I was three years old, I moved to Drieber (Dutch Drijber), a town founded 800 years ago on the sandy soil of Central Drenthe. I had to move there because my Dad and Mom did. In 1976 I married a girl from Oogeveine (Dutch Hoogeveen), and we settled in her hometown.
I’m interested in everything that has anything to do with Low Saxon—culture, but particularly history, all those things that have happened in the Old Region of Drenthe in the past. On such historical events I base theater plays in the language of Drenthe, and these are performed at annual street festivals. I am the director of two amateur theater groups, one in Westerbork and one in Oogeveine. Besides this, I write poetry and once in a while a story. Currently I am busy producing a musical I wrote six years ago: Cillie Nevelhekse (“Cecily Fogwitch”), based on the novel under the same title by the Oogeveine writer and painter Albert Steenbergen (1814–1900), a story about a 17th century young woman that had sought her fortune here only to be considered a witch by the locals. We hope that 2006 will see the premiere in the form of an open-air performance in Schoonhoven, a test area near the Hollandscheveld.
Folktales, sagas and legends are all of interest to me, and I try to uncover their origins. I hope I will get some responses about this from my Fellow-Lowlanders. It’s all right if they are in English, Afrikaans or German; I can’t write these all that well but am able to read them.
A Beat
My heart beats yet another beat, and I sense the peace within me
as rhyme, ground-covering, preserving most all in
its
chill,
Until the sun here too applies warm rays,
Singing an ode to Brigit, poets’ and
poetry’ deity.
I feel her present, close as to touch.
My spirit melts,
rhyme turns into dewdrops, flows onto parchment copiously.
Frontpage
Hello, folks of the Lowlands!
ll right, so I haven’t yet introduced myself, and here I go catching up on it.