Myths,
Legends & Other Tales
Mythen,
legenden en andere verhalen
Mythen, Legenden und andere Mären
 ise elve women known as witte wieven, gnomes named kabouters, the Klabautermann water sprite as a sailors’ helper, the ghost ship Flying Dutchman, owl calls as harbingers of death, legendized
Frisian lords and freedom fighters like Folcwald and Finn, outlaws like
Grutte Pier, Klaas Störtebecker and Robin Hood turned into heroes, Northern Germany’s and the Eastern Netherlands’ spirits of fields, fens, heaths and wetlands, Britain’s hobgoblins, flibbertigibbets, green men, and eachies, and
all those pre-Christian deities turned into undying legendary figures … The Lowlands’ mythologies are extraordinarily rich. Some elements go back to ancient Germanic
beliefs, others to Celtic and Slavic traditions. Some (like that of
the jester Dyl Ulenspeghel) are known across borders. Fairytales
have absorbed some of these myths. Other myths have been turned into
Christian legends. Already in
early times, fables
came to be translated from
one Lowlands language into another, as well as into German and French.
The well of traditional oral literature of the Lowlands is virtually
inexhaustible.
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