discussion

During the seminars we all wondered if there are some dutch folktales. And if we have any dutch heroes? We had quite a hard time to think of a good example. Personally I still can’t think of any other hero than maybe Michiel de Ruiter. Two weeks ago I was in a bookstore and I found a book about Dutch folktales. First came the victory feeling like “yes!! we do have or stories”, and now comes a translated dutch folktale! Enjoy!

De groote en de kleine Hul.

(The great and the little hill)

Once in the time that there were giants living in our country. Something happened at the home of the giant of Uddel who lived near Uunnilo ( an old forest that once was on the veluwe). It was in the middle of the night and  the giant of Uddel woke up because of an giant thunder. Which came from Thunar the thundergod, the enemy of the giant breed. With one great thunder Thunar devostated the oven which was built a hundred feet from the giants home. The next morning the giant and his giantwoman saw how big the damage was. And they realized that it is impossible to rebuild the oven before tomorrow, the day that the giantwoman should bake her bread.  After some discussion they descided to ask their  giantneighbours and friends if they could use their oven.  And so it happened that the giant of Uddel went walking to the giant of Elspeet who lived at the other side of the forrest. Of course it wasn’t a problem to use their oven. ” Just bring some wood and the dough you want to bake” said the giant of Elspeet. After some cursing towards the thundergod Thunnar the giant of Uddel pulled out some trees to use as burning wood. The giant of Uddel stayed for dinner and ate some stew out of a giant bowl and drunk some honey-wine. Actually some more wine than good was for a good night of sleep.  When he went home he promissed that he would be back at 6 o’clock the next morning with the dough.

When the Giant of Uddel came home, he fell directly asleep and was snorrig so loud that it was heard loudly 7 miles from his home. The next morning when the sun came up the giant of Uddel woke up and realized that he slept far to long. It had allready been 6 o’clock! He climbed out of his own bed and thrown his wife out of hers and yelled that she had to make dough as soon as possible. The giant of Uddel went outside, and saw allready the smoke out of the oven of the giant of Elspeet. He went inside grabbed the dough and walked as soon as possible to Elspeet. He walked so fast that he got sand is his woodenshoes (klompen). It became during his walk more and more. Even so much that he started to irritate at it.  So he decided to make a stop and empty his woodenshoes. First the right one, because the amount of sand was the most in his right one. After that the left one. At that moment there wasn’t any wind. The sand stayed  and formed two hills. Nowadays the hills are stil there on the same spot between Uddel and Elspeet.

After all the trouble the giant of Uddel came in time to bring the dough and lived happily ever after.

So that is one of the stories there are some more. They will follow later.

Source: veluwsche sagen, Gust. van de Wall Perne, Uitgeverij Sirius e Siderius.

For new readers: this is a group blog and many of the authors are new to blogging so I thought I would channel Miss Manners and write a post about the etiquette of blogging.

1. Linking

Remember footnotes and bibliographies? Those are the ways that researchers use to pay homage to the source of information or an idea. On the web, those become links which connect one post to another. When writing a post, it is good manners to link to the source of that information. We are using wordpress, so to do that, highlight the piece of text or image that contains at least part of the idea you are quoting, click the link (is it an image of a chain link in the visual editor? I cannot remember) button and paste the link into the pop-up window. It’s easy! Do it.

2. Images

Some images are so widespread on the web that it is hard to determine whether or not it has a copyright. When you can link to the author of the image, do so! Don’t pretend that images that belong to someone else are your own. Link, link, link. I, for instance, know that people are using images that we took of Iran on their own sites without attribution and it upsets me a bit. Please link to us folks… Don’t just use our images.

3. Quoting: Use Blockquotes: b-quote

Readers need to know whether or not the text is the writers or someone else’s. This is so easy: < blockquote > Text here < /blockquote >(Get rid of the spaces between <> and the beginning and end of the text inside.) In wordpress, highlight the text you are quoting and click on the “ (quotation marks) or b-quote button depending on which interface you use.

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We may need more tips as we go, but this will do as a start.