# Things Seen in Holland/Chapter V

CHAPTER V
HISTORY AND LANGUAGE
THE Dutch nation is happy to-day, in spite of its past history, which constitutes a wonderful record, not only of its everlasting fight against the encroachments of the sea, but of its struggle with some of the greatest of the Great Powers. It is sufficient, within the limits of this book, to give only a brief summary of Holland's history, dating it from the abdication of Margarethe, wife of Louis of Bavaria, in favour of her son, William of Bavaria, ​whereupon the dynasty of Bavaria ruled in the land. Jacqueline, or Jakoba, of this line, transferred her rights to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Burgundians ruled for fifty years, when the inheritance went to Austria.
BACK FROM FISHING.
Broad-breeked Volendammers sauntering, while the wives are cooking the dinner.
​moment in the existence of the Dutch nation there arose a man whose name is revered in Holland to this very day, and the descendants of his subjects have transferred to his descendants the affection and gratitude their forebears felt for him. Like Lincoln he was the “Father of his People,” and like him he was foully assassinated. William of Nassau, “the Silent,” Prince of Orange, was born at Dillenburg, in the Duchy of Nassau, in 1533.
His appellation of “the Silent” is thus explained: One day while hunting in the forest of Vincennes with Henry II. the Prince of Orange and the King became separated from the rest of the party. Henry's mind was full of the scheme formed between himself and Philip of Spain to extirpate heresy by a general massacre of Protestants in France and the Netherlands. Believing that the Prince of Orange was in ​the secret, the French King revealed the matter to the Prince, who was prudent enough to be silent, and not to reveal his feelings, thus earning his title of “the Silent.” The appellation would seem a more appropriate one in the case of Philip II. of Spain, who seldom spoke, and whose stern lineaments never revealed that which was in his thoughts. William could, indeed, speak, and eloquently when circumstances demanded, but he was a great statesman who knew when to keep his own counsel, and who knew the Dutch—a people who required of him deeds, and not mere words.
ALKMAAR'S WHARVES.
Pyramids of golden-hued cheeses piled up ready for shipment.
​oppressor of the country; nor was he, at least in the beginning, the incarnation of Calvinism, which was the soul and the strength of the revolt against Spain.
Charles V. conferred on the young Prince many high honours, among them that of Stadhouder (Lieutenant of the Sovereign) of the Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, which post was confirmed by Philip II. This would amply suffice to explain the Prince's primary reluctance to identify himself with the revolt of the Dutch Netherlands. It was not until he had pleaded in vain with Philip II., and until he had witnessed the exasperation of his people over the atrocities perpetrated by that fiend the Duke of Alva, that he came to the conclusion that he was not forfeiting his honour in resisting the Spanish tyranny. The States-General offered him the leadership, and he accepted ​it, when his personal prestige quickly made itself felt. As a General, however, he was singularly unsuccessful: twice did the Spaniards drive him back. The most memorable event in Dutch history—the taking of Brielle by the “Sea-beggars” in 1572, following upon which a number of towns in Zeeland and Holland dared for the first time to raise the standard of revolt, and to pronounce in favour of William—was accomplished without his having any part in the deed. He failed also in his attempt to relieve beleaguered Haarlem, which was compelled to surrender to the Spaniard, and to witness the massacre of one-half of its population. Lastly, William's dream of welding into one kingdom the seventeen provinces nowadays constituting Holland and Belgium was not to be realized.
With all that, no member of the House ​of Orange has ever enjoyed to so great an extent the confidence of the nation. His strong individuality; his perspicacity in unmasking and foiling Spanish intrigues; the selling of all his chattels, even to his silver table-ware, to meet the expenses of the war; the price placed on his head by the Spaniards, who thereby recognized his importance as the leader of the revolt; the death of three of his brothers on the battlefield, all stamp him as the organizing spirit of the revolt against Spanish rule. When he died he uttered words treasured to-day: “God have mercy upon me, and upon my unfortunate people!” Following in his steps, the House of Orange has ever endeared itself to its subjects by studying their pronounced individualism, and to that House is due the prominent part which Holland played in the annals of the seventeenth century. Hence the undying ​affection felt for William the Silent and his successors. By her utterance at the time of her inauguration Queen Wilhelmina struck a responsive chord in the hearts of her subjects, who saw incarnated in her the spirit of her great ancestor.
IN A SHIPPING QUARTER.
Barges and steamers loading flour at Alkmaar.
​motto of his uncle, Je maintiendrai. At his death, which took place at the siege of St. Dizier, his vast lands went to his first cousin, William of Nassau. As this boy Prince—for he was only eleven years of age when he came into his inheritance—was thus a personage of importance, both the Emperor Charles V. and the Church considered it important to secure his good graces. Hence it was that Charles V. gave his authority for the acceptance of the inheritance, on condition that the new Prince should be brought up in Brussels and in the Roman Catholic religion. This is how Prince William came to take up his residence in the Netherlands. In 1701 the principality of Orange reverted to France, but the Dutch Princes retained the escutcheon and the motto.
The history of the Netherlands' struggle against Spain has been told by Motley, ​whose work is so highly thought of in Holland that it has been translated into the Dutch language, and is used as a textbook in the schools. The story has also been told by the Dutch historian Blok; it is a story of barbaric savagery on the part of the Spaniard, and of sturdy resistance and bloody retaliation on that of the Hollander.
ALKMAAR.
The name signifies “all sea,” and the town is the centre of the North Holland cheese trade.
​swallowed up by a larger one, a fate they dread.
There is hardly a city in the Netherlands which does not call forth grim recollections. To be besieged was for many years a matter of course for Dutch cities. These sieges gave birth to heroes. In 1573 Leyden was besieged by Valdez, the Spanish General, and defended by Van der Voes and Adrian van der Werf, the Burgomaster who, to those who suggested surrender, replied: “My own fate is indifferent to me; not so of the city entrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved, but starvation is preferable to the dishonoured death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not. My life is at your disposal. Here is my sword; plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I am alive.” ​William of Orange had enjoined upon the Leydeners to hold out for three months, as Holland's destiny lay in their hands; they responded to his appeal. Finally, he resolved to inundate the surrounding country. The dikes were broken in sixty places, while the sluice-gates of Rotterdam and Gouda were opened, when Dutch ships under Admiral Boisot sailed to the rescue of the beleaguered city, massacred the Spaniards, and the Dutch entered Leyden. William heard the good news while in church at Delft, proceeded to Leyden, and, as a reward for its citizens' more than heroic resistance, gave them the choice between immunity from certain taxes and the establishment of a University. The Leydeners chose the latter.
ON THE FRINGE OF THE DIKE.
Volendam women and children standing with their backs to the Zuider Zee.
​year memorable in the annals of sieges, that De Bossu was fighting De Sonoy, off the Y, at the beginning of the siege of Haarlem. John Haring planted himself upon the dike at a point where it was so narrow that two men could hardly stand abreast. He held in check one thousand of the enemy, to enable his countrymen to rally, but in vain; all his efforts merely assisted their retreat in good order. John Haring distinguished himself again at the siege of his native city, when the Spanish Admiral De Bossu was defeated by Cornelius Dirkszoon, and imprisoned in the city for three years. John Haring's part in the battle consisted in clambering aboard the Inquisition, the Spanish flagship, and hauling down her colours. This deed of bravery cost the humble hero his life. Quaint old Hoorn, be it said en passant, also saw the birth of Willem Schouten, who discovered ​the passage round the headland known as Cape Horn, and gave the latter the name of his native city. Another Hoorner's name, Abel Tasman, lives in Tasmania; he discovered both that island and New Zealand.
Reference has been made to the death of three of William the Silent's brothers on the battlefield. Two of them, Counts Louis and Henry of Nassau, were defeated and slain by the Spaniards at Mook, a tiny place in Limburg, on the heath of Mook, in 1574. Gallantly they rode in a desperate charge into the ranks of the enemy, never to be seen again. For centuries has the name of the locality served as a curse. A Dutchman will wish another on the Mookerheide: “Ik wou dat hij op de Mookerheide zat” (“I wish you were on the heath of Mook”).
Photo. Halftones Limited.
OFF THE ISLAND OF MARKEN.
Young “Knickerbocker” and his sisters skating to school. In Holland everyone is as much at home on the ice as on land, and children learn to skate almost before they can walk.
ON THE WAY TO EDAM.
Volendam maidens coming down from the dike to go to the canal-boat
​a considerable part of his conquests. Holland's history subsequent to this period is of little interest. In 1795 the French Republic's troops invaded the country and created the Batavian Republic, and a few years later, in 1810, Napoleon annexed Holland to his Empire. The French were driven out of the Netherlands by the Dutch, aided by Russia and Prussia, when the Prince of Orange, son of William V., the last Stadhouder, who died in exile in 1806, ascended the throne of Holland as an independent Sovereign, He was created King of the Netherlands (Belgium and Holland) by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, under the title of William I. The bond was severed by the Revolution of 1830. He abdicated ten years later, and was succeeded by his son, William Frederick of Orange, who had fought under the Prussian flag during the Napoleonic wars; ​he was wounded at Auerstädt, and he again fought at Waterloo with the Dutch-Belgian Legion. William II. was succeeded by William III. in 1849. The latter was the father of Queen Wilhelmina, and at his death, in 1890, the male line of the House of Nassau-Orange became extinct. During the minority of the Queen, her mother, Queen Emma, the King's second wife, acted as Regent. The heir to the Dutch Crown is Princess Juliana, born on April 30, 1909.
Besides the explorers already named, the record must be preserved of Barentz and Heemskerk, who discovered Novaya Zemblya, and whose fortitude has been immortalized by the Dutch poet Tollens.
DRAWBRIDGE AT EDAM.
Leading from Volendam to the Cheese City.
​triumphantly give proud expression to the words, “Wien Ne'erlandsch bloed door d'aderen vloeit, van vreemde smetten vrij” (“Those in whose veins the Netherlands blood flows free from foreign taint”); for it is blood that has told in the past, tells in the present, and will assuredly continue to tell in the future. It has told against the Germanic races, the Romans, the Franks, the Danes, the Normans, and the Spaniards; in Java, Sumatra, the East and West Indies, New Netherland, Japan, Brazil, Guiana, the Cape of Good Hope, and New York; it has in days past worsted England on the sea, resisted the Grand Monarque, and at one time made of the Dutch one of the three Great Powers of the day.
It is generally believed that a knowledge of German will enable one to get on in Holland, but such is far from being the case. Although the Dutch and German ​languages possess much that is in common, the pronunciations and the spellings are at variance. It is only the student who will notice the similarity between loopen and laufen (to run), and lepel and Löffel (a spoon), while English people must not too literally translate as the equivalents of words in their own language such words as tot, coster, baker, golf, pink, met, and blazer, for their Dutch signification is till or until, sexton, nurse, wave, sailing-smack, with, and blusterer, or blow-hard. These to give only a few illustrations. With regard to the matter of pronunciation, the Dutch g presents the same difficulty as to pronunciation as the Spanish letter j. An excellent exercise for those who wish to master this difficulty is to repeat the following line:
“Grietje, gooi geen goeje groente in de gracht”—i.e., “Maggie, do not throw any ​good vegetables into the canal.” An Arab or a Spaniard can doubtless master this stumbling-block in Dutch pronunciation, but it is doubtful whether an Englishman will succeed.
A few words of Dutch may here be given for the benefit of English-speaking cyclists, who will frequently come across sign-boards bearing the words “Gevaarlijke helling,” which do not mean that the road leads to Hades, but merely “dangerous slope”; “Bondsrijwiel hersteller” are Cyclists' Touring Union repairers, while the amateur photographer will readily recognize “dark chamber” in its equivalent “donkere kamer,” provided he has the merest smattering of German. Both English and Dutch hail a cat as “puss,” the Dutch spelling the word poes, which is pronounced in the same fashion, and is an imitative word, from the noise of the cat spitting.
HOORN'S FAMED WATER-TOWER.
Cape Horn is named after this now “dead city” of the Zuider Zee.
​times this street was known as Wilgen-Pooten-Straat (the street planted with willows). The word “bowery” is the Dutch bouwerij, or peasant's dwelling. A far-fetched etymology is the one which would derive bouwerij from bos, and make of the boer a cattle-raiser. The Dutch peasant was styled a boer, or “dweller,” long before a distinction was made between the cattle-raiser and the market-gardener.
Americans have, for centuries past, consumed quantities of waffles (wafelen), crullers (krullen), and cookies (koekjes).
From Hindeloopen does Cape Henlopen in Delaware Bay take its name, while Cape May, off the coast of New Jersey, is the namechild of the first European shipbuilder in America, who explored the southern, as Block did the northern, coast of New Netherland. In 1614 Adrian Block went ​up the Connecticut River, entered Narragansett Bay, and sailed past Cape Cod as far as Boston Harbour. He gave his name to a large island which he visited, and which is known to the present day as Block Island.
The names of places tell eloquent stories, and indicate fords, castles, dams, havens, and churches; drecht, burg, kerk, bosch, hout, heiden, poort, and haven, are respectively ford, burgh or borough, church, wood, timber, heath, port, and haven. Dordrecht is the “tower of the ford”; Holland, woodland; Het Loo, the grove, the affix loo being found in many other names of places throughout the country and in Belgium—Waterloo, for instance. Veen, or ven, means peat-bog, and is coupled with loo in Venlo; and we find the two words coupled again in Louvain, or Loo-Veen, in Belgium. ​To the tapperij, the drinking-place, wherein we drink from the tap, in contradistinction to the sluiterij, where we drink from the bottle, do we owe our military “tattoo,” which is none other than tap-toe (the tap is closed), the tattoo being the signal for closing the taps in the public-houses. The seeker after etymologies will find a goldmine in Holland.
Traces there are, of course, of Spanish blood among the Dutch population, and occasionally of Spanish customs. One in particular is to be met with in the villages on the banks of the Lek, or Lower Rhine. There, a man seeking a quarrel with another will plant his knife in the table at which his enemy sits. The knife will be promptly plucked out, and the two will adjourn to the street and attempt to slit each other's cheeks (kaaken snijden). Should the ​challenge not be accepted, the one who declines to fight had better leave his native village for ever. To the present day, in Andalusia, the lowest type of people and the gipsies issue the same form of challenge.
IN MEDIEVAL HOORN.
Activity displayed in the cheese-market of a “dead city.”