Nederlandsche Sagen En Legenden

A treasure from the early 20th century, this collection gathers the fading whispers of Dutch oral tradition before they dissolved entirely into modernity. Josef Cohen undertook urgent work here: preserving tales that had passed through generations by firelight and hearth, stories where merchant ships carry fortunes and curses alike, where the proud meet their reckoning in fog-shrouded villages along the Zuiderzee. The opening legend of the Lady of Stavoren stands as a stark moral fable, a wealthy woman, her ships laden with foreign riches, encounters a beggar at the harbor's edge and turns her face away. The curse that follows is swift and merciless. These are not gentle nursery rhymes but something older and stranger: narratives that blend dark humor, aching sentiment, and the unsettling knowledge that the old gods of the Low Countries kept careful accounts. Cohen frames these tales with a foreword that acknowledges folklore as the soul of a people, fragile and contested, now largely fallen silent. For readers seeking the strange magic of Northern European storytelling, this volume preserves what might otherwise be lost.