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Ebook has 2613 lines and 101794 words, and 53 pages

Illustrator: Albert Delstanche

Translator: Geoffrey Whitworth

THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL IN THE LAND OF FLANDERS & ELSEWHERE

by CHARLES DE COSTER

Lamme and Ulenspiegel at the Minne-Water Frontispiece At Damme when the Hawthorn was in flower Facing page 2 Claes and Soetkin 8 Philip and the Monkey 26 Nele and Ulenspiegel 44 The Feast of the Blind Men 54 The Monk's Sermon 76 Father and Son 94 Ulenspiegel and Soetkin by the Dead Body of Claes 118 "Ah! The lovely month of May!" 174 Lamme succours Ulenspiegel 218 The Mock Marriage 224 Lamme the Victor 232 "'Tis van te beven de klinkaert" 242 The Death of Betkin 248 "The ashes of Claes beat upon my heart" 262 Nele accuses Hans 268 Katheline led to the Trial by Water 278 "Shame on you!" cried Ulenspiegel 284 The Sixth Song 302

FOREWORD

The book here offered in English to the English-speaking public has long been known and admired by students as the first and perhaps the most notable example of modern Belgian literature. Its author was born of obscure parentage in 1827, and, after a life passed in not much less obscurity, died in 1879. The ten years which were devoted to the composition of "The Legend of Tyl Ulenspiegel" were devoted to what proved, for de Coster, little more than a labour of love. Recognition came to him but from the few, and it was not till some thirty years after his death that an official monument was raised at Brussels to his memory, and an official oration delivered in his praise by Camille Lemonnier.

To the undiscerning among his contemporaries de Coster may have appeared little else than a rather eccentric journalist with archaeological tastes. For a time, indeed, he held a post on the Royal Commission which was appointed in 1860 to investigate and publish old Flemish laws. And towards the end of his life he became a Professor of History and French Literature at the Military School in Brussels. Never, certainly, has a work of imagination, planned on an epic scale, been composed with a closer regard for historical detail than this Legend. But if our present age is less likely to be held by this than by those other qualities in the book of vitality and passion, it can only be that de Coster poured into his work not merely the knowledge and accuracy of an historian, but the love as well and the ardour of a poet and a patriot.

The objection--if it be an objection--that de Coster borrowed unblushingly from his predecessors need never be disputed. His style is frankly Rabelaisian. The stage whereon his actors play their parts is set, scene almost for scene, from the generally available documents that served such a writer as Thomas Motley for his "History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic." Even the name, the very lineaments of Ulenspiegel, are borrowed from that familiar figure of the sixteenth-century chap-books whose jolly pranks and schoolboy frolics have been crystallized in the French word espi?glerie, and in our own day set to music in one of the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss.

Yet from such well-worn ingredients de Coster's genius has mixed a potion most individually his own. The style of Rabelais is tempered with a finish, a neatness, and a wit that are as truly the product of the modern spirit as was the flamboyant jollity of Rabelais the product of his own Renaissance age; the sensible, historical foreground of a Motley becomes the coloured background to a romantic drama of human vice and virtue, linked in its turn to a conception of the cosmic process which has no other home, surely, than in the author's brain. While Ulenspiegel himself is now not simply the type of young high spirits and animal good humour, but a being as complex, as many-sided almost as humanity--all brightness of intellect, all warmth of heart, all honour, and all dream--the immortal Spirit of Flanders that knows not what it is to be beaten, whose last song must for ever remain unsung.

What shall we say of those other homely personages who fill the scene--symbols no less of Flemish character at its finest and of the enduringly domestic springs of Flemish national life? Claes the trusty fatherhood, Soetkin the valiant motherhood of Flanders, Nele her true heart, Lamme Goedzak her great belly that hungers always for more and yet more good things to eat and is never satisfied? Or what, again, of the tragic Katheline, half witch, half martyr, and the centre of that dark intrigue which seems to throb like a shuttle through the mazy pattern of the plot, threading it all into unity?

From yet another standpoint: as an envisagement of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, de Coster's work is probably without parallel in an already well-tilled field. The sinister figure of the King of Spain broods over it all like a Kaiser, and the episodes of stake and torture are recorded with a realism which might appear exaggerated had not modern Belgium--though in terms of "scientific warfare"--an even more devilish tale to tell. The fact is that de Coster's trick of stating horror and leaving it to make its full effect without a touch of the rhetoric of indignation, proves the deadliest of all corrosive weapons; and it is hardly surprising that the book had been hailed in some quarters as a Protestant tract. But de Coster himself was in no sense a theological partisan, and his sympathy with the Beggarmen sprang from his enthusiasm for national liberty far more than from any bias towards the Protestant cause as such. That Catholicism has ever been identified with tyranny the best Catholic will most deplore, nor will de Coster's "traditional" irreverence blind such a reader's eyes to the spiritual generosity which permeates the whole work, and is, indeed, its most essential characteristic.

G. A. W.

HERE BEGINS THE FIRST BOOK OF THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS JOYOUS AND HEROIC ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL AND LAMME GOEDZAK IN THE LAND OF FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE

At Damme, in Flanders, when the May hawthorn was coming into flower, Ulenspiegel was born, the son of Claes.

When she had wrapped him in warm swaddling-clothes, Katheline, the midwife, made a careful examination of the infant's head, and found a piece of skin hanging therefrom.

"Born with a caul!" she cried out joyfully. "Born under a lucky star!" But a moment later, noticing a small black mole on the baby's shoulder, she fell into lamentation.

"Alas!" she wept, "it is the black finger-print of the devil!"

"Monsieur Satan," said Claes, "must have risen early this morning, if already he has found time to set his sign upon my son!"

"Be sure, he never went to bed," answered Katheline. "Here is Chanticleer only just awakening the hens!"

And so saying she went out of the room, leaving the baby in the arms of Claes.

Then it was that the dawn came bursting through the clouds of night, and the swallows skimmed chirruping over the fields, while the sun began to show his dazzling face on the horizon. Claes opened the window and thus addressed himself to Ulenspiegel.

"O babe born with a caul, behold! Here is my Lord the Sun who comes to make his salutation to the land of Flanders. Gaze on Him whenever you can; and if ever in after years you come to be in any doubt or difficulty, not knowing what is right to do, ask counsel of Him. He is bright and He is warm. Be sincere as that brightness, and virtuous as that warmth."

"Claes, my good man," said Soetkin, "you are preaching to the deaf. Come, drink, son of mine."

And so saying, the mother offered to her new-born babe a draught from nature's fountain.

While Ulenspiegel nestled close and drank his fill, all the birds in the country-side began to waken.

Claes, who was tying up sticks, regarded his wife as she gave the breast to Ulenspiegel.

"Wife," he said, "hast made good provision of this fine milk?"

"The pitchers are full," she said, "but that doth not suffice for my peace of mind."

"It seems that you are downhearted over your good fortune," said Claes.

"I was thinking," she said, "that there is not so much as a penny piece in that leather bag of ours hanging on the wall."

Claes took hold of the bag and shook it. But in vain. There was no sign of any money. He looked crestfallen. Nevertheless, hoping to comfort his good wife--

"What are you worrying about?" says he. "Have we not in the bin that cake we offered Katheline yesterday? And don't I see a great piece of meat over there that should make good milk for the child for three days at the least? And this tub of butter, is it a ghost-tub? And are they spectres, those apples ranged like flags and banners all in battle order, row after row, in the storeroom? And is there no promise of cool refreshment guarded safe in the paunch of our fine old cask of cuyte de Bruges?"

Soetkin said: "When we take the child to be christened we shall have to give two patards to the priest, and a florin for the feasting."

But at this moment Katheline returned, with a great bundle of herbs in her arms.

"For the child that is born with a caul," she cried. "Angelica that keeps men from luxury; fenel that preserves them from Satan...."

"Have you none of that herb," asked Claes, "which is called florins?"

"No," said she.

"Very well," he answered, "I shall go and see if I cannot find any growing in the canal."

And with that he went off, with his line and his fishing-net, knowing that he would not be likely to meet any one, since it was yet an hour before the oosterzon, which is, in the land of Flanders, six o'clock in the morning.

Claes came to the Bruges canal, not far from the sea. There, having baited his hook, he cast it into the water and let out the line. On the opposite bank, a little boy was lying against a clump of earth, fast asleep. The boy, who was not dressed like a peasant, woke up at the noise that Claes was making, and began to run away, fearing no doubt that it was the village constable come to dislodge him from his bed and to hale him off as a vagabond to the steen. But he soon lost his fear when he recognized Claes, and when Claes called out to him:

"Would you like to earn a penny, my boy? Well then, drive the fish over to my side!"

At this proposal the little boy, who was somewhat stout for his years, jumped into the water, and arming himself with a plume of long reeds, he began to drive the fish towards Claes. When the fishing was over, Claes drew up his line and his landing-net, and came over by the lock gate towards where the youngster was standing.

"Your name," said Claes, "is Lamme by baptism, and Goedzak by nature, because you are of a gentle disposition, and you dwell in the rue H?ron behind the Church of Our Lady. But tell me why it is that, young as you are, and well dressed, you are yet obliged to sleep out here in the open?"

"Woe is me, Mr. Charcoal-burner," answered the boy. "I have a sister at home, a year younger than I am, who fairly thrashes me at the least occasion of disagreement. But I dare not take my revenge upon her back for fear of doing her some injury, sir. Last night at supper I was very hungry, and I was clearing out with my fingers the bottom of a dish of beef and beans. She wanted to share it, but there was not enough for us both, sir. And when she saw me licking my lips because the sauce smelt good, she went mad with rage, and smote me with all her force, so hard indeed that I fled away from the house, beaten all black and blue."

Claes asked him what his father and mother were doing during this scene.

"My father hit me on one shoulder and my mother on the other, crying, 'Strike back at her, you coward!' but I, not wishing to strike a girl, made my escape."

All at once, Lamme went pale all over and began to tremble in every limb, and Claes saw a tall woman approaching, and by her side a young girl, very thin and fierce of aspect.

"Oh, oh!" cried Lamme, holding on to Claes by his breeches, "here are my mother and my sister come to find me. Protect me, please, Mr. Charcoal-burner!"

"Wait," said Claes. "First of all let me give you this penny-farthing as your wages, and now let us go and meet them without fear."

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