Episode Details

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Part Six of Folk Tales of the Netherlands continues William Elliot Griffis's Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks of 1918 in our own telling, with the book's tenth tale, in his order. (Parts One to Five carried tales one to nine; the Dutch tales are read here part by part — this is not the whole book. The tenth tale stands alone in this part, and Part Seven opens with the book's eleventh tale.)

The Woman with Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Children — the famous legend of The Hague. A childless Countess, rich and ill-tempered, turns a beggar widow from her garden unfed and will not believe the twins on the poor woman's back are hers; the mother's answering wish, that the Countess may have as many children as there are days in the year, comes true beyond all reckoning: in leap year, three hundred and sixty-six babies, none bigger than a mouse, are born in the great house, are carried to the Groote Kerk on trays and in mince-pie dishes, and are baptized by the good Bishop Guy, every boy named Jan and every girl Lisbet — and that evening, as Griffis tells it, every one of the wee creatures dies, and is remembered for hundreds of years by a monument in the church. In keeping with this shelf's practice, the tale stands as Griffis told it: the hunting and hawking of the old Vijver country and the widow's husband, killed in the war, stand in his summary narration and single reported clauses, the Countess's seized stick and her servants driving the beggar out at the same summary weight, no blow struck and no injury told, and the babies' death in the tale's closing single clause, no hand against them and no suffering told; no completeness is claimed beyond what is read here.

Chapters:

00:11 — The Woman with Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Children

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 7 of the Dutch tales follows on this shelf.

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