Customer Reviews

Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks

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So these stories have good imagery, but they feel a bit flat; the children are all obedient and learn perfect moral lessons and/or discover the Secret of Turning Flax into Linen, which is fine if that's what you want out of a fairy tale, but I could only handle a finite number of such stories and gave up less than half-way through.

Stories included are:

The Entangled Mermaid
The Boy Who Wanted More Cheese
The Princess with Twenty Petticoats
The Cat and the Cradle
Prince Spin and Miss Snow White
The Boar with the Golden Bristles
The Ice King and his Wonderful Grandchild
The Elves and their Antics
The Kabouters and the Bells
The Woman with Three Hundred and Sixty-six Children
The Oni on his Travels
The Legend of the Wooden Shoe
The Curly-Tailed Lion
Brabo and the Giant
The Farm that Ran Away and Came Back
Santa Klaas and Black Pete
The Goblins Turned to Stone
The Mouldy Penny
The Golden Helmet
When Wheat Worked Woe
Why the Stork Loves Holland

The collector of these tales lived between 1843 and 1928. He inserted close to two dozen stories in this volume. The stories reflect life in Holland where there are many lakes, where people wear wooden shoes, love cheese, and have quant customs.

The first tale, for example, is about a Dutch mermaid, who was the queen of the mermaids, and her friends, mermaids and mermen, who frolicked at a pool made up of fresh and salt water. The enjoyed life to its fullest. They frequently talked about how wonderful their life is and how terrible life must be for humans who needed to dress, wear wooden shoes, pin up their hair, and be unable to swim all day.

One day, a merman swam to the mermaids and wept as he told them that men with wooden shoes were coming to create a dam and dry up the pool. The queen did not believe the report, sent the mermaids and the merman away, and went to sleep.

When she awoke, after along sleep, she went into the pool and found that the report was true. Her pool was already almost dried up. She tried to get out, but her hair became entangled in weeds, men in wooden shoes came and captured her and put her in an exhibition in a glass cage. She died of shame.

Scientists came to study her and then stuffed her and put her body on exhibition. And thus she became in death more famous than any other mermaid or merman.

The second tale concerns a Dutch boy who loved cheese and although his mother told him he was overeating, he could not get enough cheese. One night, fairies came to his bed and took him to a forest. They danced together all night and gave him so much cheese that he could not eat more. But they kept on insisting that he continue to eat.

The third fable tells of the origin of the city of Rotterdam and the practice of the Dutch girls to wear many petticoats.