Front Matter

Introduction

T HE CHRISTMAS TALES OF FLANDERS presented in this volume are popular fables and legends current in Flanders and Brabant, which have for centuries been told to children throughout Belgium. Their origin is doubtful, as all literature handed down by oral tradition must be. A good many of these stories are found in a different guise in the legends of other nations. "Seppy" is closely akin to the rhyme of "The Old Man who lived in the Wood"; and the prototypes of others will be readily recognized; but all of them have peculiar Flemish traits. They have the picturesqueness characteristic of the country which produced such a glorious school of painting, and the freshness of their presentation is a high tribute to the creative imagination of the Flanders' folk. Sometimes they are primitive to a degree, and in such tales as "Simple John" and "The Boy who always said the Wrong Thing," the story-teller attributes the most elementary and artless mentality to his heroes, so as to explain the extravagant adventures he relates. These tales occupy for the Flemish the place nursery rhymes take in England, and as the nursery rhymes have been collected in England at various times and in different forms and guises, so the Flemish folk-tales have also been collected in various ways and in various parts of Flanders. Messrs. Demont and Decock produced a book entitled "Zoo Vertellen de Vlamingen," from which collection a good many of these stories are taken. Others came from the "Brabantsch Segenboak," which J. Teiclinck wrote for the Flemish Academy. They were translated by M. C. O. Morris and are here published for the first time in English.