Episode Details

KacheliTV opens a new shelf: the folk tales of the Netherlands, in William Elliot Griffis's Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks of 1918 — the old tales of Holland as Griffis retold them for young readers, and read here in our own telling. Part 1 begins where the book begins, with the first two tales in his order.

"The Entangled Mermaid" tells of the mere folk, the people of the pools, who kept their great pool at the river's mouth clean and quiet, and of their Queen, proudest of her beauty, who would not believe the young merman who swam in, weeping salt tears, to warn her that the men in wooden shoes were coming with pickaxes, spades and pumps to drain the pool and dyke out the sea. She slept too long, and woke to a drained land, a new dyke, and a fence she could not pass. In keeping with this shelf's practice, the tale stands as Griffis told it: the Queen's death in the showman's tub is a single clause, and what the learned men of Leyden made of her afterwards is the book's own folk ending, told in its two sentences; no completeness is claimed beyond what is read here.

"The Boy Who Wanted More Cheese" is Klaas Van Bommel, twelve years old, rosy-cheeked, and never, at any table, given cheese enough. Scolded and sent to his garret bed with a stomach as heavy as lead, he hears a voice in the night, promising plenty of cheese, and follows the ladies of the wood to the fairies' ring in the pine woods — where the Dutch fairies, who never get tired, set him dancing, and then set him eating. It is a dream tale, and he wakes at sunrise exactly as a boy should.

Chapters: 00:10 — The Entangled Mermaid 11:32 — The Boy Who Wanted More Cheese

Source: William Elliot Griffis, Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1918), from the public-domain 1918 edition (Project Gutenberg eBook #7871). Griffis retold these tales in his own English; our telling is a fresh in-house rendering of his 1918 text. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.

Thank you for listening — Part 2 of the Dutch tales follows on this shelf. 🔊 The KacheliTV podcast carries a new world folk tale every day — follow the show so the next story finds you.