The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands

Copyright © 2008 by Theo Meder

A long time ago, there lived a boy in Spaarndam in the province of North Holland, whose father was a sluicer. [1] When he was about eight years old, his parents sent him to bring some pancakes to an old blind man, who lived in the polder [2] on his own.

It was a beautiful autumn afternoon when Hansie Brinkers – that was the name of the boy – went on his way with a small package under his arm. For more than an hour he stayed with the old man, who appreciated his company very much. As Hansie walked back over the dike, he noticed that the tide was higher than normal. He imagined how the angry water would batter his father's solid sluice doors. He couldn't bear the thought that the water would ever break through the dike, destroying the sluices and flooding the fertile land. The revenge of the water on his father would be enormous!

While daydreaming, he walked on, looking back at the old man's house every once in a while. The red tone of the setting sun made the windows glow, as if everything was ablaze. The setting of the sun made Hansie Brinkers realize that he had stayed away too long; his long shadow on the grass slowly started to vanish into the dark. After he had quickened his steps, he suddenly heard something that made him stand still and stiff as a rod. It was the sound of seeping water. He slid down from the dike and, at the bottom, found a trickle of water coming through the dike, not over the dike. A hole, a hole in the dike! If the water would keep on flowing like this, the hole would get larger and larger, until the dike would break. If the flow of water wasn't stopped at once, Spaarndam and the surrounding area would be overtaken by disaster. Almost instinctively he put his finger in the hole, and the water stopped running.

In the beginning it took him little effort to stop the water, but eventually he grew numb with cold because of the wet grass and the humid mist hanging low over the meadows and the water. He started crying for help, but nobody could hear him. No one risked walking on the dark dike that late at night. He grew colder and colder, stiffer and stiffer, and a distinct pain went through his finger, through his hand, and finally through his entire body. He called for help and for his mother. His mother, however, had closed the door and the shutters hours ago and intended to reprimand her son next morning, because he had stayed overnight at the old man's place.

Meanwhile, Hansie wasn't even able to whistle for help because his teeth were chattering with cold. Then he prayed to God for help and, not knowing what else to do, he decided to stay there until the next morning.

All night long, he sat there, leaning against the dike and trying not to fall asleep. The pain from cold and cramp turned his body numb. The night seemed to last forever. However, when the new day was dawning, a parish priest passed by over the dike, who. had kept watch near the bed of a dying man all night. He found Hansle Brmkers and immedIately understood what peril the people had escaped from.

[1] Someone in charge of the water level by opening or closing the wooden doors (the sluice).

[2] Low-lying and often reclaimed land that is kept dry by ditches, sluices, and dikes.

The legend of Hans Brinker (or Hansie Brinkers) was unknown in the Netherlands before it was invented by the American writer Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) in her children's novel Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, dating from 1865. By the way, in the novel it is not Hans Brinker who puts his finger in the dike, but an anonymous boy. The story became known in the Netherlands mamly through American tourists, who kept asking about the statue of the little hero who saved the country from drowing. To please the foreign tourists, a small statue was erected in Spaarndam in 1950 (altough the origmal story took place near Haarlem). Because of its American origin, the story of Hans Brinker cannot be found in older edtions of Dutch folktales and rarely in more modern editions, although nowadays most people in the Netherlands do know that Hans was the boy with his finger in the dike. It's kind of a silly story, because anyone who knows anything about Dutch dikes will understand that a finger cannot prevent flooding. Furthermore the clear-cut heroism in the legend is a bit un-Dutch. There isn't an international folktale type for this story, although I invented TM 2603, Hans Brinker, for my own Dutch Folktale Database. The translation is based on Bert Sliggers, Volksverhalen uit Noord- en Zuid-Holland (Utrecht and Antwerp, 1980), pp. 89-90.